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Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurated the country’s still-flourishing and lucrative tourist industry. This book is about Edinburgh’s most emblematic architecture over the long 19th century: the castellated and stone-built cityscape of national revivalist architecture. It sets out why Scotland had, by the 1820s, become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, with its majestic highland scenery. It reveals how Edinburgh developed as both a hub for many travellers who were drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James Macpherson’s Ossian and Sir Walter Scott, including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, and Joseph Haydn (who composed pieces based on Scots songs).
The book also provides a long-overdue counterbalance to the contrastingly much-examined and much-published topic of Enlightenment Edinburgh, showing how this and Romantic Edinburgh have co-existed comfortably (and perhaps necessarily). It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, as well as discussing the legacy of those who contributed to the Romantic cityscape of today; an architecture that provides much of the character of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and of the city that countless tourists come daily to see.
Professor Aonghus MacKechnie is a historian and heritage professional, who teaches Architectural Conservation at three universities: the University of Strathclyde, where he is based, as well as Edinburgh and Stirling. He previously spent 40 years as a government adviser with Historic Environment Scotland, dealing with historic buildings, archaeology, historic landscapes and battlefields. His most recent books are Scotch Baronial: Architecture and National Identity in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2019, co-authored) and The Architecture of Scotland 1660-1750 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020, co-edited).