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Edinburgh
Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-burra), Dun Eideann in Scottish Gaelic, is a major and historic city on the east coast of Scotland on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, and in the unitary local authority of City of Edinburgh. It has been the capital of Scotland since 1492 and is the site of the Scottish Parliament, which was re-established in 1999. The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. In the census of 2001 Edinburgh had a total resident population of 448,624.
The origin of the city's name is understood to come from the Brythonic Din Eidyn (Fort of Eidyn) from the time when it was a Gododdin hillfort, perhaps, as David Nash Ford suggests, when it was the home of the mid-6th century King Clinog Eitin whose epithet records the placename. After it was besieged by the Bernician Angles the name changed to Edin-burh (Edwin's fort), possibly derived from the 7th century Northumbrian king Edwin.
Edinburgh is well known for the Edinburgh Festival, a collection of several arts festivals, and for the Hogmanay celebrations which are becoming one of the largest in the world. The city is affectionately nicknamed "Auld Reekie" (Old Smokey). Some have called it "the Athens of the north" in reference to its architecture and 19th-century intellectual life (as well, perhaps, as the National Monument).
The Centre of Edinburgh
The historic centre of Edinburgh is divided into two by the broad green swath of the Princes Street Gardens. To the south the view is dominated by Edinburgh Castle, perched atop an extinct volcanic crag, and the long sweep of Old Town trailing after it along the ridge. To the north lies Princes Street and the New Town. The gardens were begun in 1816 on marsh land which had once been a loch, the Nor'Loch.
Some 70 million years ago several volcanic vents in the area cooled and solidified to form tough basalt volcanic plugs, then later a glacier swept from west to east, exposing rocky crags to the west and leaving a tail of material swept to the east. At the castle rock this tail formed a narrow steep sided ridge, declining in height over a mile till it meets general ground level at Holyrood. At the same time, the glacier gouged out ground to each side, leaving the ravine of the Grassmarket and Cowgate to the south, and the swampy valley of the Nor'Loch to the north.
This formed a natural fortress, and recent excavations at the castle (described in Excavations within Edinburgh Castle by Stephen T. Driscoll & Peter Yeoman, Society of Antiquaries Scotland Monograph Series 12 1997) found material dating back to the Late Bronze Age, as long ago as 850 BC.
In the 1st century the Romans recorded the Votadini as a British tribe in the area, and about 600 the poem Y Gododdin using the Brythonic form of that name describes warriors feasting in Eidin's great hall.
The map coordinates of the centre of Edinburgh are approximately 55°57' N, 3°11' W.
Old Town
The Old Town has preserved its medieval plan and many reformation-era buildings. One end is closed by the castle and the main street (the Royal Mile) leads away from it; minor streets (called closes or wynds) bud off the main spine in a herringbone pattern. Large squares mark the location of markets, or surround major public buildings such as St Giles Cathedral. This layout, typical of the old quarters of many northern European cities, is made especially picturesque in Edinburgh, where the castle perches on top of a small mountain and the main street runs down the crest of a ridge from it.
The old city is also home to some of the earliest "high rise" residential buildings. During the 1700s the Old Town had a population of about 80,000 residents, however in modern times it has reduced dramatically to just 4,000 residents. The population was for a long time reluctant to build outside the defensive wall, so as the need for housing grew the buildings became higher and higher. However many of these buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1824. They were then rebuilt on the original foundations. This led to changes in the ground level and the creation of many passages and vaults under the Old Town.
On December 7, 2002, another major fire in the Old Town engulfed part of the Cowgate. It destroyed the famous comedy club The Gilded Balloon and much of the Informatics department of the University of Edinburgh, including the comprehensive AI library.
New Town
The New Town north of the gardens and Princes Street, was begun in the latter 18th century; it has grown greatly since then, but to this day it remains a very fine example of Georgian town-planning and architecture.
Viewpoints
The varied topography of the city includes several summits which command sweeping views over Edinburgh.
To the southeast of central Edinburgh stands the eminence known as Arthur's Seat, overlooking Holyrood House and the Old Town beside it. The crag is a collection of side vents of the main volcano on which Edinburgh is built. The volcano slipped and tipped sideways, leaving these vents the highest points for miles around. Arthur's Seat is now part of Holyrood Park, originally owned by the monarch and part of the grounds of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It contains Britain's largest concentration of geological SSSIs, as well as providing the people of Edinburgh with spectacular views of and from Arthur's Seat and somewhere to relax after a long day in the city.
To the northeast, overlooking the New Town, is Calton Hill. It is topped by an assortment of buildings and monuments: two observatories, a tower dedicated to Admiral Horatio Nelson, the old Royal High School (once almost the home of a devolved Parliament), and an unfinished national monument modeled on the Parthenon from the Athenian Acropolis, which is nicknamed Edinburgh's Disgrace. It was commissioned by the city of Edinburgh independently on behalf of the nation to commemorate Admiral Nelson's victory at Trafalgar. When Edinburgh ran out of money substantially before completion, the city of Glasgow offered to fund the remainder of construction; Edinburgh refused to take the money and the building remains not much more than a frontage to this day.
The Harbour
With the redevelopment of Leith – Edinburgh's sea port, once a town in its own right – Edinburgh has gained the business of a number of cruise liner companies who now provide cruises to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands from Leith. Leith also boasts the Royal Yacht Britannia, berthed behind the new Leith Ocean Terminal.
Football
Edinburgh has two football clubs; Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian. Both play in the Scottish Premier League.
More Information
Edinburgh Festival
Other Features of Interest
- Forth Rail Bridge
- Forth Road Bridge
- Edinburgh International Airport
- University of Edinburgh
- Heriot-Watt University
- Scottish Parliament Building
Famous residents
- Alexander Graham Bell, telephone pioneer, was born in Edinburgh
- Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, was born in the city and attended its exclusive Fettes College high school
- William Burke and William Hare, noted grave-robbers, plundered the city's graveyards
- James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
- Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was born in the city's New Town
- Sean Connery, actor
- Douglas Haig, World War One field marshal, was born in Edinburgh
- John Knox, Protestant Reformer, lived in Edinburgh and "John Knox's house" is preserved in the High Street
- John Napier, mathematician, mainly remembered for the invention of logarithms
- John Porteous, captain of the city guard, lynched during the Porteous Riots of 1736
- David Roberts, 19th century painter and lithographer
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter author, wrote her first book in an Edinburgh coffee-shop
- Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, wrote fondly of the city before moving to Samoa
- James Young Simpson, an obstetrician who conducted the first experimental use of chloroform for
anesthesia
- Nigel Tranter (1909-2000), historian, writer, lived in Edinburgh
- Irvine Welsh, novelist, author of e.g. Trainspotting, is from Edinburgh
- Ian Rankin, author of the "Inspector Rebus" series of crime thrillers, attended Edinburgh University
Twinned cities worldwide
Edinburgh is twinned to several cities across Europe and throughout the rest of the world. These include:
- Xi'an, China
- Munich, Germany
- Florence, Italy
- Nice, France
- Vancouver, Canada
- Kiev, Ukraine
- Aalborg, Denmark
- San Diego, USA
- Dunedin, New Zealand
External links:
Article is provided courtesy of Wikipedia.org and distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
 
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