THE NEW TOWN

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Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Open daily 10:00 to 17:00, late night Thursdays open until 19:00

The red Dumfriesshire sandstone and Gothic revivalist style of the National Portrait Gallery is in striking contrast to the Craigleith stone and classical proportions of Queen Street. It was also deliberately designed to be different from Playfair's classical galleries on the Mound.

The idea of a national collection of portraits grew out of a specifically 19th century British Imperial notion of education by example, and it's not such a bad one for all that. Scotland's was the second of only four in the world, the others being in London and Dublin and, since 1962, in Washington.

Founded in 1882, it was the dreamchild and gift to the city of John Ritchie Findlay, proprietor of The Scotsman newspaper and a committed philanthropist. The building was designed by Robert Rowand Anderson and completed in 1890. Inspired by the Doge's Palace in Venice, Anderson also incorporated an impressive array of sandstone historical figures into his design. Unfortunately they're not labelled.

Walking round the outside of the building, it's entertaining trying to decipher who's who.

As you approach the gallery, walking east along Queen Street, the first group of historical statues at the northwestern corner consists of a sailor, a soldier, a philosopher and a political economist: Adam Duncan of Camperdown, Sir Ralph Abercromby, David Hume and Adam Smith respectively. On the front facade, John Knox stands steadfast in the fourth niche along. Next to him towards the entrance is the Good Sir James Douglas, standing above and to the right of Robert the Bruce, whose heart he took with him in a box on the Crusades. High up on a pinnacle above the main entrance is History, while below her, Scotland sits crowned in the central arch behind, she in turn supported by Industry and Religion.

Under the front windows there are three panels, with Fine Arts in between the Ruder Arts (craftsmen of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages), and the Sciences (Medicine, Astronomy and Navigation). The Fine Arts panel is interesting because, as with the sculptures generally, great attention has been paid to figurative accuracy. Strangely the Arts are represented by artists of international acclaim: Painting, in a monk's habit, looks like Fra Angelico; Poetry seems to be Dante; and on the right, Sculpture itself is a likeness of the early 19th century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

Beneath them, in the spandrels of the front entrance's arch, are War and Peace, and all are guarded by Malcolm III Canmore and his wife Queen Margaret, standing above Sir William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce. Continuing past the main entrance, James VI and I stands next to Malcolm III, followed by earlier Scottish kings. On the corner of Queen Street and North St Andrew Street stand James Hutton, the geologist, the surgeon John Hunter, artist Sir Henry Raeburn, the 17th-century lawyer James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount Stair, who wrote the 'Institutions of the Law in Scotland', and John Napier, the 16th-century inventor of logarithms.

Round the corner, in the middle of the eastern wall on North St Andrew Street, is Mary, Queen of Scots supported by her defenders John Lesley and William Maitland. At the top corner nearest St Andrew Square are four poets from the 14th-16th centuries: John Barbour, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas and Sir David Lindsay. En masse the statues introduce the formidable processional frieze in the Gallery's Central Hall, where they all appear again, contributing to an even more expansive Victorian celebration of great Scots, which even includes Edward I of England, three Vikings and a Druid.

There's a good Café in the gallery, if you're in need of a sit down. To continue turn left off Queen Street down Dublin Street, heading for the more imposing proportions of the second New Town.

On the left is Abercromby Place, named after General Sir Ralph Abercromby who gave up his blanket to a cold soldier as he lay dying himself at Aboukir Bay in the Napoleonic Wars. It was the first curved street in town and its construction drew astonished crowds. No.17 was home to architect William Henry Playfair, and is now an upmarked guesthouse (see p.233). At No.3 a plaque commemorates Mary Stopes, pioneer of birth control.

Carry on down Dublin Street and turn left into Drummond Place.

Named after the Lord Provost George Drummond, who proposed the building of the New Town, Drummond Place was the second phase's equivalent to St Andrew Square and it too has its share of distinguished former residents. No.38 was home to Adam Black, another Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who bought the rights to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1827, and is commemorated with a huge statue in Princes Street Gardens. Sir Robert Lorimer, architect of the National War Memorial and the Thistle Chapel in St Giles, altered No.4 for his brother John Henry Lorimer, introducing curves to the panelled front door, and a scroll above it. As a plaque records, this was also the home of the painter, Sir William McTaggart, grandson of the other painter McTaggart. Nos.31 and 32 were the home of Sir Compton 'Whisky Galore' Mackenzie until 1972, and only just managed to accommodate his library of 12,000 books.

Turn left out of Drummond Place down Great King Street.

The parallel of George Street, and also named, with hindsight rather ironically, after mad George 111, Great King Street was completed around 1820. It consists of four palace-fronted blocks divided in the middle by Dundas Street. J. M. Barrie lodged at No.3 as a struggling young journalist. Earlier in the century Thomas 'Opium Eater' de Quincey stayed in the brand new block at No.9 for four years.

Turn right at the comer of Great King Street and Dundas Street.

This corner is where the last sedan chair in Edinburgh was available for hire
until 1870. Half a century earlier the city's streets were home to 101 of these
single-seater, two-man-powered weatherproof boxes for the well-to-do.
Rickshaws, pulled by English-speaking rugby players, have emerged as their
equally labour-intensive, environmentally friendly late 20th-century replacement.

Take the next left off Dundas Street into Cumbertand Street.

This low, tenemented street demonstrates the preservation of social distinctions in the New Town's architecture: cheaper apartments meant that the servant class could afford to live in the New Town, behind the grand boulevards.

Emerging at the other end, you are confronted by the massive facade of St Stephen's Church.

Described rather cruelly by one academic of the time as 'a mouth without cheeks', the church is a remarkable New Town landmark. Originally it was intended that it should stand in Royal Circus at the end of Great King Street, but, like St Andrew's before it, it ended up being allocated a much smaller and more problematic site.

Step forward William Playfair, who rose to the challenge by building an unusual square church at a diagonal to the corner, with a baroque tower and yawning entrance monumental enough to draw the eye from distant George Street up the hill The pendulum for its clock is supposedly the longest in Europe. The church's cavernous but plain interior, always too large for its congregation, was divided in two in the 1950s with a floor at the level of its gallery. Quite recently it closed down altogether and has been re-opened as a community centre.

Over the road, the late 19th-century St Vincent's Episcopal Church is tiny by comparison. This is still a place of worship, and has connections with the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem.

Bear right between the two churches and head down St Stephen Street.

Rounding the corner, you leave the New Town proper and approach Stockbridge (see Walk IV). St Stephen Street has a collection of wacky clothes and antique shops with two-tiered frontages. The left-hand side, with steps going both up and down to the small shops, restaurants and bars, is an extended example of an architectural arrangement once common in Edinburgh. In the 1970s, the street was at the forefront of Stockbridge's transformation into a trendy area for artists, students and then yuppies. Further along on the right, set back from the street, is the Georgian arched gateway to Stockbridge Market, announcing the availability of 'Butcher Meat, Fruits, Fish and Poultry'.

At the end of the street, turn left, cross North West Circus Place and climb the zigzag steps tucked away behind the tiny Stockbridge Post Office, which will briny you suddenly back into New Town surroundings in India Street.

No. 14, about halfway up on the right, was where the remarkable James Clerk Maxwell was born in 1831. Brought up at the family estate of Glenlair in Galloway, he attended the Edinburgh Academy, where he was nicknamed 'Daffy' because of his stammer and strong regional accent. At the age of 15 he presented his first paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in George Street, the start of a career in science which was to see him take up the first ever professorship of experimental physics at Cambridge in 1871. There he developed his revolutionary ideas on electromagnetic radiation, his 'Maxwell equations', which laid the foundations of subsequent theories of electronics. He died eight years later, but his work was important enough for him to be hailed the 'father of modern science', and for his contribution to be ranked with the discoveries of Newton and Einstein. His house is now the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

On the left, in Jamaica Street West, Kay's Bar is a cosy pub housed in the last surviving early 19th-century house in the street.

At the top of India Street, turn left to see where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, at No. 17 Heriot Row. There's a plaque, and a weathered information board on the gardens opposite. Then retrace your steps and turn right into the quiet rotund regularity of Moray Place.

The last and most impressive of the New Town developments, Moray Place, Ainslie Place and Randolph Crescent were built by the Earl of Moray between 1822 and 1855 with the benefit of lessons learned from the first two developments: less uniformity, fewer straight lines, and even stricter instructions on admissible designs. Moray Place was the glorious centrepiece: a huge 12-sided Roman Doric circus. Enough of its original appearance, right down to the cobbles and paving stones, has survived for it to be a favourite film location, standing in as a generic 'grand address' in any great Western European city during the early 19th century.

The Earl of Moray ensconced himself firmly at No.28. Surprisingly enough, religious reformer Thomas Chalmers lived at No.3 from 1831 to 1835. Some of the houses are now smart offices; those that aren't probably belong to millionaire lawyers. On the north side, spectacular private gardens visible from Doune Terrace slope down to the Water of Leith.

Head up Great Stuart Street to Ainslie Place.

Here it's easy to appreciate the grandeur of the architect Gillespie Graham's conception, as he set about rivalling Playfair's Royal Terrace on Calton Hill. William Blackwood lived at No.3 from 1830 to 1834; Dugald Stewart died at No.5 in 1828; and Sir Charles Bell, discoverer of the sensory and motor nerves of the brain, lived at No.6.

Carry on up Great Stuart Street, which continues after Ainslie Place, to Randolph Crescent.

At No. 13, on the right, is the French Institute, with an interesting gallery and, as you might expect, a very good Café and restaurant.

If you want to escape from city grit and unyielding pavements, you can join the leafy riverside of Walk IV here by turning right on to Queensferry Street, towards the Dean Bridge, and then left down Bell's Brae. Otherwise turn left on to Queensferry Street, and walk along it to look down Melville Street, to the right, with a fine view of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral.

The Gothic mass of the cathedral, built between 1874 and 1917, contrasts dramatically with Melville Street's classical lines. The architect George Gilbert Scott provided the designs, and he is said to have considered it one of his finest works. It undeniably possesses a solemn dignity. The stone buttresses outside, supporting the 270ft main spire, can also be seen on the inside of the church. The twin spires of the cathedral, known as Barbara and Mary after the Walker sisters who left enough money for the great church to be completed, completely upstage the statue of Robert Dundas, son of the mighty Henry, half way down the street.

Turn left from Queensferry Street into Randolph Place and walk down either of the narrow alleys beside West Register House, around to the front entrance on Charlotte Square.