Gladstone's Land wears its history on its frontage, quite literally. The golden hawk perched above the door is the family crest of Thomas Gledstanes, the merchant who bought and renovated this Lawnmarket tenement in 1617. "Gled" is Old Scots for hawk, which is also where the family name came from, and it is a detail that will strike you as pleasingly logical once you know it.

The building dates to 1550 and is one of the oldest survivors on the Royal Mile. It is also the only remaining example of an original front arcade used by a shopkeeper. Inside, the medieval ceiling beams are still painted with exotic fruits and flowers. The upper floors housed wealthy tenants; the ground floor served as a shop, with pigs kept below. By the 1930s, it faced demolition. The National Trust for Scotland stepped in.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use Gladstone's Land to trace Edinburgh's Old Town mercantile world, explaining how tenement life worked from pig pen to painted ceiling and connecting the building to its most famous descendant: four-times Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.