Edinburgh City

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, which in turn is part of the United Kingdom. Edinburgh is the seventh most popular city in the UK overall and the second largest city in Scotland, as Glasgow is the largest. Edinburgh is on the east coast of Scotland on the Firth of Forth and close to the North Sea.

History

Edinburgh has had human inhabitants since the Bronze Age and in the Pentland Hills and at Holyrood, for example archeologists have found very early stone settlements. First century Roman invaders found a people known as Ceiltic and whom they called the Votadini. It wasn’t until the tenth century that the area came under the rule of the Scots and in 1492, James the Fourth of Scotland moved the royal court from Stirling to Holyrood, making Edinburgh the capital city. In 1603 James the sixth succeeded to the Irish and English thrones and sought to bring the countries together as a United Kingdome and marched to England in order to rule the kingdom from London. In 1707 the Act of Union placed  responsibility for Edinburgh in the hands of the English parliament, and remained that way for the next three hundred years. The Hanovarian King George the third tried to win the favour of the people of the city in the mid-eighteenthcenturies and he commissioned new buildings to be erected in his honour. Thus, areas such as George Street, Frederick Street and Prince’s Street were named after the king and his two sons.

Many people regard Edinburgh as one of the most picturesque cities in Europe due to its rugged terrain along with plenty of Georgian architechture, Medieval castles and stone tenements. Edinburgh is also renowned for being one of the seats of the Enlightenment period through figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations.

The Athens of the North

As Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh is also where the Scottish Paliament is located. Both Edinburgh’s old and new town districts were listed as world heritage sites in the mid-nineteen nineties. Key Enlightenment figures at Edinburgh University earned the city the nickname of ‘Athens of the North.’ The area has 40 conservation areas and four and a half thousand listed buildings inside the city, which is the highest ratio of old to new in any other UK city.

The Edinburgh Festival

The total residential population of Edinburgh is just under half a million, a population that is swelled considerably by tourism, particularly  during the annual Edinburgh Festival, which takes place over the whole of August. The number of visitors attracted to the city at festival time virtually doubles the city’s population during that time. The events feature the Edinburgh Fringe and the variety of events makes this the largest performing arts theatre of its kind in the world.

The city attracts more than a million international visitors every year, among the most visited cities in the UK. In 2007, a Chanel 4 programme voted Edinburgh one of the best places to live in the UK.