Edinburgh's history is stacked vertically: Bronze Age burials under the Castle, a medieval Old Town of 14-storey tenements, a Georgian New Town built on Enlightenment ideals, and a parliament that returned after 292 years.
The oldest surviving building in Edinburgh, built around 1130 by David I for his mother Queen Margaret. It survived Robert the Bruce's 1314 slighting of the castle because he ordered it spared. Below, the vaults held Napoleonic prisoners of war who carved graffiti still visible today.
A warren of 17th-century streets sealed beneath the Royal Exchange in 1753. Guides in period character walk you through the homes of the Chesney family and gravedigger, and through the plague year of 1645 when a quarter of the city died. Temperature stays around 10°C.
The King's official Scottish residence, founded as an Augustinian abbey in 1128. Mary, Queen of Scots' bedchamber and the outer room where her secretary David Rizzio was stabbed 56 times in March 1566 are open; the roofless abbey nave collapsed in 1768.
The National Covenant was signed here in February 1638. In 1679, some 1,200 defeated Covenanters were penned in the southern field for five months through a Scottish winter. The Black Mausoleum of 'Bluidy' George Mackenzie, who prosecuted them, sits at the far end.
Six floors tracing Scotland from 2.9 billion-year-old Lewisian gneiss to devolution. Key objects: the 12th-century Lewis Chessmen, the Monymusk Reliquary carried at Bannockburn in 1314, and the Maiden — Edinburgh's guillotine, used from 1564 to 1710.
The largest monument to a writer anywhere in the world, completed in 1844 for Sir Walter Scott. Its 61-metre Gothic spire holds 68 statuettes of Scott's characters. Architect George Meikle Kemp drowned in the Union Canal before it was finished.
A 1796 New Town townhouse by Robert Adam, restored to how it looked when John Lamont of Lamont lived here. The basement kitchen, wine cellar and servants' quarters show the machinery behind Enlightenment-era gentility — and the 24 residents packed into one house.
Enric Miralles' 2004 building reopened Scottish legislature after a 292-year gap since the 1707 Act of Union. It cost £414m against a £40m estimate and won the Stirling Prize anyway. The Debating Chamber ceiling is held by oak and steel beams shaped like upturned boats.
Built in 1470, the oldest surviving tenement on the Royal Mile, with hand-painted ceilings from 1600. It was saved from demolition in 1849 purely on the claim Knox died here in 1572 — probably false, but the lie preserved a genuinely medieval building.
Scotland's chief port from the 14th century, where Mary, Queen of Scots landed from France in August 1561 and where the 1650 Cromwellian siege lines still shape the street plan. The Signal Tower of 1686 began as a windmill for grinding rapeseed oil.
Launched 1953, sailed 1,087,623 nautical miles on 968 official voyages before decommissioning in 1997. The Royal Apartments are untouched — the Queen's single bed, the 1930s Rolls-Royce garage, and the sick bay that doubled as an operating theatre.
A milling settlement for over 800 years — eleven watermills ground grain for Edinburgh here from the 12th century. Well Court's 1884 red-sandstone block was built as model workers' housing by the Scotsman's proprietor. The 1832 Dean Bridge by Thomas Telford crosses 32m above.