THE OLD TOWN

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The University District

Built by architect James Brown in 1766, and named after his brother, George Square was once Edinburgh's most prestigious address, the largest and smartest new development outside the old town's city walls before the coming of the New Town. Unbelievably, in the 1960s Edinburgh University was allowed to demolish three sides of the square to make room for several large, ugly modern buildings to house various university departments, but the surviving west side, which houses some of the university's arts departments, still gives an idea of how the square would originally have looked.

Almost every house that remains is associated with some great historical figure: at No.22, the young Jane Welsh secretly met the historian Thomas Carlyle for the first time in 1821; No.23 is the house where Sherlock Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, lived for four years some sixty years later; at No.24 lived Henry Erskine, the great lawyer and poor man's friend, who pressed a coin into Boswell's hand when he met him with Dr Johnson, whispering 'for the sight of the bear'; Sir Walter Scott was brought up in No.25; at No.27 lived General Sir Ralph Abercromby, who used to walk the square with a pet ape sporting a cocked hat. Robert McQueen, Lord Braxfield, the type for Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Weir of Hermiston', lived at No.28; Henry Dundas, 'the Dictator of Scotland', died in his house here in 1811.

Other noteworthy residents included Admiral Duncan of Camperdown, John Jamieson, the Scots lexicographer, and Lady Don, a fierce 'Directrix' of society balls and the last person in Edinburgh to keep a sedan-chair. Her neighbour might have been the Duchess of Cordon, the beautiful patroness of Robert Burns, who had attracted attention as a girl by riding down the High Street on a pig.

At the bottom of George Square you can take a break from the walk to wander around the Meadows.

In spring, when the cherry blossom is out, or on long summer evenings, the wide open expanses of the Meadows are a delightful place to read, walk or picnic. Both Edinburgh's professional football teams once used this turf as their home ground, now trodden by countless amateur teams on Sunday afternoons. After dark though, anywhere away from the lamplit paths is best avoided.

The Meadows were once under water, the Southside's equivalent of the Nor'loch, and known as the Borough Loch. In the 18th century they were par tially drained by Sir Thomas Hope of Rankeillor and renamed Hope Park, and in 1886 Edinburgh's answer to London's Great Exhibition was held here. A great glass pavilion was constructed, on a similar scale to the Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park, and visited by about 18,000 people a day over six months. Riots broke out when it was closed: students locked the manager in his office and he had to be rescued by the police.

To continue the walk at the bottom of George Square, turn left and walk around the back of the University Library. The short narrow flight of steps ahead of you takes you into Buccleuch Place.

This row of houses is part of the nerve centre of the University of Edinburgh. At the far end, the house jutting out a lot further than all the others was once the George Square Assembly Rooms (see below).

Built by James Brown shortly after he built George Square, Buccleuch Place is an imposing but pleasant piece of Scottish vernacular classicism. As you walk down the street, keeping to its right-hand side, you can read the names of the various university departments smartly signposted on the doors. At No. 18 a plaque commemorates the founding of the Edinburgh Review by Francis Jeffrey and Henry Brougham in 1802. The Review was much more than just a literary journal. As Walter Scott said of it, 'its left leg was literature, but its right leg was politics.' It was a free-thinking supporter of the Whig reform movement.

Cross Buccleuch Place Lane and note the original stone slab still set into the cobbles, making it easier for a street-sweeper to clear away the mire for the well-heeled

The well-heeled might well have been making their way to No. 15 Buccleuch Place, where the aristocracy, frequently the target of the Review's polemics, would have graced the George Square Assembly Rooms, the last ballroom in the Old Town. The unassuming cornershop at the end of the street on the left, where it meets Buccleuch Street, is where millionaire Sir Tom Farmer started Kwik-Fit in the 1960s.

Turn left into Buccleuch Street (which becomes Chapel Street) and, after the church, turn right into West Nicolson Street. At the end of the street turn left into Nicolson Street; a little way along on the right-hand side is the grand main entrance of Surgeon's Hall, home of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Royal College of Surgeons

The college is housed in an ionic temple designed for the purpose by William Playfalr, a grand edifice fitting for the prestige that the medieval craft guild had acquired. The college was founded In 1505, when the Town Council of Edinburgh granted a Charter of Privileges to the Barber Surgeons.

To visit the college, leave the noisy traffic on Nicolson Street for a moment and walk down Hill Street into the sudden tranquillity of Hill Square, where the cars and buses are unexpectedly replaced by trees and birdsong.

The Sir Jules Thorn Exhibition of the History of Surgery (entrance at 9 Hill Sq; open Mon-Fri 2-4) has a rather traditional display on the story of surgery on the ground floor, with copious explanatory texts on glass cases. Upstairs there is a much more accessible, highly instructive new exhibition on modern surgical methods, in celebration of half a century of the National Health Service. The adjacent Dental Museum, oddly enough, comes as something of a relief, with its extracting keys, vulcanite dentures and fearsome-looking hand drills.

If you're seriously interested in medical matters, it is possible by written arrangement to visit the rest of the college and the Playfair Pathology Museum (entrance at 18 Nicolson Street, (0131) 527 1649; tours by appointment only;. The tour takes you through Playfair's fine front entrance and round the Fellows' Library and President's Room. At the top of the stairs there's a portrait of Joseph Bell, President from 1887 to 1889, a pipe-smoker with a distinctive nose—and the model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The Pathology Museum is housed in the handsome classical Playfair Hall, which is arranged like a library except that the shelves are stacked with a gruesome array of pickled lungs, limbs, bones and even babies. According to the guide, 'the beauty of the collection is that you can see tumours of a size they would never achieve today' {beauty being strictly in the eye of the beholder). Modern sensibilities would never allow a collection of this kind to be preserved today, but then again, technology has advanced enough to make it unnecessary.

Back on Nicolson Street, opposite the Royal College of Surgeons is a relative newcomer to Edinburgh's arts scene: the Festival Theatre.

Reflecting the college's columns in its welcoming, steel-framed glass facade, the Festival Theatre was carefully designed around the huge Art Deco auditorium of the Empire Theatre that once stood on this site.

Cross over to the theatre and continue down this side of the street until you reach the imposing classical portico of the Old College of the University of Edinburgh.

The building Is the headquarters of the University of Edinburgh's administration and also houses part of its Law Faculty, and a section of its library in the beautiful Playfair Hall. At the back of the building is the Talbot Rice Gallery I open Mon-Sat 10-5) which has a small permanent exhibition of Dutch and Italian old masters, and galleries which hold excellent exhibitions of contemporary art I see p.247). Old College was Robert Adam's largest and most spectacular public commission, begun in 1789, but not completed until many years later. The massive columns of the awe-inspiring front entrance are made from single blocks of Craigleith stone. On its construction the Old College was known as the New University; the old university had been founded here some two centuries earlier.

This was also the site of Kirk o'Field, the house where the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley, narrowly escaped death from an explosion suspected to have been caused by the Earl of Bothwell. Darnley was subsequently strangled in the garden. Inside the front gate, the Old Quad is another sensitive piece of work by Playfair, decorated on all sides with rhythmic arches and simple stone balustrades. The college's dome was not added until the end of the 19th century; it is topped with an Art Nouveau gilded youth clutching the torch of Learning, who is sometimes referred to as 'the Golden Boy'.

Turn left out of the college's main arch, cross over Chambers Street, and walk a little further up South Bridge from where there is a good view down into Cowgate. Retrace your steps and turn right into Chambers Street.

The creation of Chambers Street at the end of the 19th century demolished several once grand squares which had declined into slums. It is named after Provost William Chambers, the publisher—with his brother Robert—of dictionary fame.

Walk up the street until you reach the great Italianate front of the Royal Museum on the left-hand side, with the stunning new Museum of Scotland next door, rounding off the top of the street.

These are Edinburgh's two finest museums and deserve a lengthy detour. They also both have good Cafés and restaurants where you can pause for refreshment.

ROYAL MUSEUM AND MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND- see next section.