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Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurating 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 reveals why Scotland had by the 1820s become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, due both to the majestic Highlands, and to Edinburgh itself as city of Romanticism. Additionally, Edinburgh developed as the main centre and hub for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott: visitors including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, Haydn, amongst innumerable others.
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 comfortably co-existed. It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, and it discusses 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 the University of Strathclyde, where he is based, and Edinburgh. 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), while he is also co-author of Lothian (2024), in the Buildings of Scotland series.
Introduction. Edinburgh: ‘The most Romantic city in the world’; 1. The beginnings, a royal palace, and a queen; 2. ‘For auld lang syne’; 3. ‘The most beautiful city in Europe’; 4. 1820-1840: Highlandism, tartan, and ‘old Scots or Flemish’; 5. The Romantic Old Town; 6. ‘Old Edinburgh’ and the philanthropists; 7 ‘Old Edinburgh’ II: Patrick Geddes and the Celtic Revival; Afterword; Further Reading; Notes; Index