Building a New Scotland: Edinburgh’s New Town with Context

For over 300 years, two old enemies, Scotland and England, have shared a sometimes harmonious, often fractious, political union.

On this walking tour with Context Expert and Scottish literary historian and guide, Dr. Jenny Litster, you’ll learn to decode Edinburgh’s landmarks and better understand key moments in the city’s past. You’ll travel through the city’s Georgian New Town and learn about Scotland from 1707, when Great Britain was formed, to the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Starting in front of West Register House, you’ll walk from the neoclassical grandeur of Charlotte Square Private Gardens up to Calton Hill’s breathtaking panoramic views. Jenny will show you the townhouses, banking halls, and monuments that speak of the shifting identities of Edinburgh in the 1700s and 1800s. You’ll hear how city planners used the New Town’s street names to celebrate the royal House of Hanover and the union between Scotland and England. You’ll learn about Scotland’s new role in the British Empire and how the Napoleonic victories were memorialised.

As you make your way to the Vigil for Scottish Parliament where our tour ends, you’ll listen to colourful stories of Anthony Bourdain’s favourite pub, a king’s pink pantaloons, and a woman who was reunited with her lost limb in death.

On this 75-minute New Town tour, you’ll have the chance to:

• Find out about James Craig’s grand scheme for this new residential town and where that didn't exactly go to plan
• Admire the buildings of prominent local architects, Robert Adam and William Henry Playfair
• Pass by Bute House, the official residence of Scotland’s First Minister, and learn about the steps on the road to Devolution
• Discover the link between abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Free Church of Scotland, and the Send Back the Money campaign
• Learn about the fall and rise of tartan, through the 1822 visit of King George IV, and find out what the author Sir Walter Scott had to do with it
• Look up 45 metres to the Melville Monument, a controversial column for a man once dubbed the Uncrowned King of Scotland
• Visit the Old Calton Burial Ground, where you’ll encounter a US President, five political martyrs, and a ghoulish memorial for a sea captain’s mother
• Find out the grisly details of what lies beneath the St Andrew’s House car park

By the end of this tour, you’ll have an appreciation of the neoclassical beauty of the Athens of the North and the nation’s colourful history and future possibilities.