THE ROYAL MILE

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Walking down Edinburgh's High Street could well be the definitive tourist experience. People have been flocking to do just that for the last 700 years, and it might come as something of a surprise that this major visitor attraction is still very much the living heart of the city. Inevitably there are parts where 'heritage culture' has gone over the top, but the inhabitants and proud possessors of the Royal Mile don't yield too easily to hopeless nostalgia.

The history of what was once the most populous street in Europe is written on its stone face, take it or leave it, and as you walk along the street you can't help but feel closer to what makes Edinburgh tick than anywhere else in the city.

The walk takes you in a straight line from Edinburgh Castle all the way down the hill to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, passing the major sights of St Giles Kirk and Parliament House, and on to Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park.

The main street, which changes its name from Castlehill to Lawnmarket to High Street to Canongate as you head east, is crowded with 'lands' (or tenements) many storeys high, and punctuated by tiny cobbled 'closes' or alleys off to each side.

The walk could easily be done in an hour and a half, but would take more than a whole day if you visited every attraction en route. The best policy is to keep a close eye on the weather: there's little point in trudging up Edinburgh's little mountain in Holyrood Park in the pouring rain, but a look around Holyrood Palace or the new 'Our Dynamic Earth' exhibition would be a rewarding alternative.

As the ice sheets moved east a few millennia ago, they dumped debris behind the hard volcanic plug of the Castle Rock, leaving the distinctive 'crag and tail' formation, a long ridge gently sloping down from the solid plug. This landscape, with its hollow to the north dammed to create the Nor'Loch, and steep slopes to the south, has defined the growth of the city. It has ensured that the distinctly medieval groundplan has remained unaltered, but the Royal Mile echoes most impressively with the history of the 16th and 17th centuries: the Reformation, the struggles of the Stuarts to hang on to power, and the eventual loss of Scottish independence.

Any melancholy that this last event might have provoked is rapidly being dispelled today as the city becomes the legislative capital of the country once again. The Royal Mile has waited for the day, not always patiently, for over 250 years. This walk starts on the Esplanade in front of the castle.

EDINBURGH CASTLE
Open April-Oct daily 9.30-6; Oct-Mar daily 9.30-5; adm.

Edinburgh Castle is the most famous place in Scotland-a proper castle, with winding stairs, ruined walls, immense ramparts and lots of hiding places for children to enjoy. As if that weren't enough, its crowning glory is the superb view of the city all around. Thanks to the romantic sensibilities of the Victorians, who were responsible for the restoration of Edinburgh's most ancient holy place, St Margaret's Chapel, and since the construction in 1927 of the awe-inspiring Scottish National War Memorial, the castle has also become something of a symbol of the nation's spiritual life.

Edinburgh Castle has now really come into its own as a national monument run by Historic Scotland and as the country's most popular tourist attraction. It does become overcrowded in the summer, but remains very good value for money, and a visit here in any weather is unlikely to disappoint.

As well as a melodramatic but informative self-guided audio tour, your ticket buys access to the Honours of Scotland (the nation's crown jewels), St Margaret's Chapel, three military museums, many parts of the castle itself, including the Great Hall and Queen Mary's apartments, a perfectly preserved Victorian military prison, and a curious pet cemetery. The War Memorial on its own can be visited free on application, as well as by ticket holders.

The Esplanade-the old parade ground-makes a very grandly sited car park with magnificent views. During the Military Tattoo in August, the massive banks of seating temporarily erected here offer even more impressive views to ticket holders. Looking south from the Esplanade, you will have the best possible view of the extraordinary building which is George Heriot's School.

Avoid being run down by one of the frequent tour buses executing sweeping turns, by sticking to the edge and mulling over some of the memorials. Most commemorate soldiers of different regiments who fell in the wars in South Africa. At the entrance to Castlehill is a statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig and on the left, is a modern memorial to the witches burned here until as recently as 1722.

The impressive 19th-century gateway to the castle is guarded by two sentries and statues of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. Look out for the plaque on the gateway which commemorates the section of castle rock, now buried beneath the esplanade, which was legally granted to Nova Scotia in Canada by Charles I and has never been taken back. Above the gate an inscription reads 'Nemo Me Impune Lacessit'', the royal motto that is also engraved on Scottish pound coins, which roughly translates as 'no one messes with me and gets away with it.' The army joke is that here it simply means 'mind your head'.

Buy a ticket and enter the castle through the main gate.

St Margaret's Chapel

St Margaret's Chapel stands in a spectacular position commanding the best views northeast from the highest point on the castle rock. It's a beautifully simple building, one of the smallest churches in Britain and the oldest in Edinburgh.

A case could easily be made for its being the birthplace of the city. The chapel was constructed on the orders of Queen Margaret, the saintly Saxon wife of Malcolm 111 Canmore, but was not finished until about 20 years after her death in 1093. Brought up in Hungary, she is credited with bringing some continental sophistication into Scotland and was renowned for her charity, regularly feeding 300 beggars a day at the castle gates. Her son David I relocated the royal court here from Dunfermline and founded Holyrood Abbey. Robert the Bruce had the rest of the castle destroyed by the Earl of Moray, but relented over the chapel and ordered its restoration. It has been restored several times since, most recently in 1993 to commemorate the 900th anniversary of Margaret's death.

The interior has not been radically altered since the days of David 1. The shafts of the chancel arch are 19th century, but the arch itself, with its zigzag teeth, is probably original. The beautiful stained glass is 20th century, by Douglas Strachan (who also did much of the glass in the War Memorial, see below), and shows William Wallace in the company of saints Andrew, Ninian, Columba and Margaret. Anyone called Margaret can join the St Margaret's Chapel Fellowship and contribute to the flowers placed in the chapel on her saint's day, 16 November.

Scottish National War Memorial

On the north side of Crown Square, the castle's inner sanctum, the strong Gothic facade of the Scottish National War Memorial is impossible to mistake. Even the muffled crackle of fellow visitors' audio-guides hardly detracts from this moving place. The building itself, designed by Robert Lorimer in the 1920s on the site of the castle's church, has been justly described as a piper's lament in stone. Inside, the names of about 150,000 Scottish soldiers who gave up their lives in the two world wars are recorded in leather-bound books beneath regimental bays illuminated by stained glass. The windows alone, many of them by Douglas Strachan, are worth close examination: they include the Women's Window, showing a shell factory and workers in the fields, and dispassionate depictions of the machinery of war. Beyond these Halls of Honour, the heart of the memorial is founded on the solid castle rock, with a shrine containing the names of the dead on Rolls of Honour.

Honours of Scotland

The Honours of Scotland exhibition is also in Crown Square. The exhibition is cunningly arranged to ensure everyone in turn gets a decent look at the crown, the sceptre and the sword, recently joined by the Stone of Destiny, but it can be quite a long haul. Part of the crown was used at the coronation of Robert the Bruce, making it considerably older than the one in London, and it was last worn by Charles 11 on I January 1651. The sceptre and its dazzling globe date from two centuries before that, while the intricately carved sword of state was a present from Pope Julius 11 to James IV.

As for the Stone of Destiny, no one really knows it's just a simple block of sandstone, prompting some to claim that it's not the real thing, used to solemnize the inauguration of Scots kings at Scone since the 9th century and recorded as being richly carved; some believe it was Jacob's pillow when he dreamed about his ladder; and some subscribe to the theory that the original is being kept in hiding, passed down from generation to generation, until Scotland is a nation once again. Whatever, this one was stolen by Edward I of England in 1296, and was kept under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey. It was stolen from there by a group of Scottish Nationalists in 1950, carted off in a battered van to Arbroath, and slightly damaged in the process. The British authorities took a dim view of these high jinks, and after retrieving the stone they hung on to it down in London until they saw fit to return it. When they did, in 1996, it came across as an unsuccessful publicity stunt by the embattled and unpopular Conservative government of the time. It's hard to say whether the stone will ever be used again.

The Palace and Great Hall

Also in Crown Square is the Palace with Queen Mary's Apartments, which have recently been faithfully restored internally to look as they would have done on James VI and l's last visit in 1617. Here you can see the tiny room where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to Union Jack, James VI of Scotland and I of England. One of the old soldiers who act as guides will open the little window to reveal the vertical drop down which the baby was lowered to be baptised. He's likely to be more reticent about the mystery surrounding the baby's identity. King James himself was always unsure of his legitimacy, partly because he looked nothing like any of the other Stuarts. Further doubt arose in 1830 after a bad fire, when a small coffin was found in the wall of these apartments (although the bones were never formally identified as human). The coffin and its contents were put back in the wall. The smart money is on James being Lord Darnley's son by Mary (he was even meant to look a bit like him); another theory stems from the fact that King James VI looked rather like the son of the Countess of Mar, Mary's babysitter.

The Great Hall was the home of the Scottish Parliament until shortly after James's son Charles I ascended to the throne. Its splendid beamed ceiling was only uncovered again late last century. The room now houses a formidable armoury of Scottish weapons.

Other Castle Sights

Elsewhere around the castle you can wander along the battlements and explore the different stages of the fortification's development; marvel at the size of the mighty Mons Meg, the famous cannon so big that someone gave birth in its barrel; visit the vaults where French prisoners of war were held when they were put to laying the cobbles outside and where people like the privateer John Paul Jones were dealt with (before he founded the US navy), along with David Kirkwood, the 'Red Clydesider'; look around a perfectly preserved Victorian Military Prison, which was later used to lock up political prisoners like the Marxist John Maclean; and peer down into the well-tended Pet Cemetery where the faithful companions of the castle's commanding officers are provided with a glorious resting place way above their station.

If you happen to be in the castle at one o'clock, it's worth making your way to the Mill's Mount Battery to see another reminder of the army's presence in the castle, the firing of the One O'Clock Gun. It's been fired almost every day since 1861, and is now in the capable white-gloved hands of Tam the Gun, the longest serving District Gunner in the British Army, who carries out his duties with impressive ceremony on the dot of one every day, and at midnight on New Year's Eve. A small exhibition on the history of the tradition is in development and should complement the three military museums.