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Duddingston Parish Church
Poised on a promontory overlooking Duddingston Loch, this church is one of the oldest buildings in Edinburgh, with some interesting medieval relics at the kirkyard gate: the Joug, a metal collar that was used, like the stocks, to tether criminals and sinners, and the Loupin-On Stane, a stone step to help gouty and corpulent parishioners get onto their horses. The early-19th-century watchtower inside the gate was built to deter body snatchers .
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Greyfriars Kirk & Kirkyard
The church of Greyfriars is famous as the spot where the National Covenant was signed in 1638, rejecting Charles I's attempts to impose episcopacy and affirming the independence of the Scottish Church. Many who signed it were later executed in the Grassmarket and, in 1679, 1200 Covenanters were held prisoner in terrible conditions in an enclosure in the far corner of the kirkyard.
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Holyrood Abbey
Founded in 1128 by King David I, this ancient abbey was probably named after a fragment of the True Cross ( rood is an old Scots word for cross) said to have been brought to Scotland by David's mother, St Margaret. The bay on the right, as you look at the huge, arched, eastern window, is the royal burial vault, which holds the remains of Kings David II, James II and James V, and of Mary Queen of Scots' husband, Lord Darnley.
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John Knox House
Edinburgh's oldest surviving tenement, dating from around 1490, has an outside staircase, overhanging upper floors and crowstepped gables; Calvinist firebrand John Knox is thought to have lived here from 1561 to 1572. The labyrinthine interior has some beautiful painted timber ceilings and interesting displays on Knox' life and work.
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Mansfield Place Church
In complete contrast to the austerity of most of Edinburgh's religious buildings, the 19th-century, neo-Romanesque Mansfield Place Church at the foot of Broughton St contains a remarkable series of Renaissance-style frescoes painted in the 1890s by Irish-born artist Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936).
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