The design of the City Observatory, built in 1818, was based on the Temple of the Winds in Athens. Its original function was to provide a precise, astronomical time-keeping service for marine navigators, but smoke from Waverley train station forced the astronomers to move to Blackford Hill in the south of Edinburgh in 1895. The observatory has been redeveloped as a stunning space for contemporary visual art, and opened to the public for the first time in its history.
Collective/City Observatory
New Town
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
0.8 MILES
Edinburgh Castle has played a pivotal role in Scottish history, both as a royal residence – King Malcolm Canmore (r 1058–93) and Queen Margaret first made…
6.94 MILES
Many years may have passed since Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and the subsequent film came out, but floods of visitors still descend on Scotland's…
1.86 MILES
Built on Clydeside, the former Royal Yacht Britannia was the British Royal Family's floating holiday home during their foreign travels from the time of…
24.43 MILES
One of Scotland's great country houses, Traquair House has a powerful, ethereal beauty, and exploring it is like time travel. Odd, sloping floors and a…
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
1.73 MILES
Edinburgh's gallery of modern art is split between two impressive neoclassical buildings surrounded by landscaped grounds some 500m west of Dean Village…
0.41 MILES
The Scottish Parliament Building, on the site of a former brewery and designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles (1955–2000), was opened by the Queen in…
1.21 MILES
Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden is the second-oldest institution of its kind in Britain (after Oxford), and one of the most respected in the world…
25.7 MILES
Completed in 2002, the Falkirk Wheel is a modern engineering marvel, a rotating boat lift that raises vessels 115ft from the Forth & Clyde Canal to the…
Nearby New Town attractions
0.03 MILES
Calton Hill (100m), which rises dramatically above the eastern end of Princes St, is Edinburgh's acropolis, its summit scattered with grandiose memorials…
0.06 MILES
Looking a bit like an upturned telescope – the similarity is intentional – and offering superb views over the city and across the Firth of Forth, the…
0.07 MILES
The largest structure on the summit of Calton Hill, the National Monument was a rather over-ambitious attempt to replicate the Parthenon in Athens, and…
0.11 MILES
On the southern side of Calton Hill stands the modernist facade of St Andrew's House, built between 1936 and 1939 and housing the civil servants of the…
0.14 MILES
One of Edinburgh’s many atmospheric old cemeteries, Old Calton is dominated by the tall black obelisk of the Political Martyrs’ Monument, which…
0.23 MILES
The neoclassical Burns Monument (1830), a Greek-style memorial to Scotland's national poet Robert Burns, stands on the southern flank of Calton Hill. It…
0.24 MILES
The beautiful Register House, designed by Robert Adam in 1788 and with a statue of the Duke of Wellington on horseback in front, houses the National…
8. Edinburgh Printmakers’ Workshop & Gallery
0.25 MILES
Founded in 1967, this was the UK’s first ‘open-access’ printmaking studio, providing studio space and equipment for professional artists and beginners…