Calton Hill

A short, easy climb brings you to Calton Hill — the view that launched a thousand postcards. From up here, the whole city arranges itself before you: the castle on its rock, the spine of the Royal Mile, Arthur's Seat brooding to the south, and the blue Firth of Forth to the north. The hill's curious collection of monuments earned Edinburgh its nickname, "the Athens of the North." The most famous is the National Monument, begun in 1826 as a replica of the Parthenon honouring Scotland's dead of the Napoleonic Wars — but funds ran out with only twelve columns built, and it was mockingly dubbed "Edinburgh's Disgrace." Time has been kind; today its unfinished columns are the city's most romantic ruin. Nearby stand the telescope-shaped Nelson Monument — whose time ball still drops at one o'clock in coordination with the castle gun — and the City Observatory. Come at sunset if you can; it's the finest show in town. When you've had your fill of it, come back down and walk west along Princes Street to St Andrew Square — about fifteen minutes — and we'll carry on into the New Town.