Calton Hill is the great, grassy hill at the east end of Edinburgh’s town centre. The location of many of Edinburgh’s famous monuments, it is easily scalable by steps and offers wonderful views of the city.
Like castle rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, Calton Hill is volcanic remnant of the great volcano at Arthur’s Seat in the Queen’s Park. The hill is actually a fragment of the cone of Arthur’s Seat which has been displaced to its present position over millions of years of time.
Now, Calton Hill offers wonderful views and walks and can be a haven of peace in a busy city centre. It is a protected environment, been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest by Scottish Natural Heritage.
Calton Hill Walk
Once you get to the top you’ll find a path that runs almost right around the top. It’s a flat, wide path that gives some superb views of the city.
Start at the steps and climb to the top. On your left walk around by the monument to Dugald Stewart. Stop to admire the wonderful of the city centre, Edinburgh Castle and the old town.
Continue through the gate in the wall that surrounds the City Observatory and take a right at the Observatory to exit the observatory walls for another spectacular view to the north of Edinburgh and the sparkling waters of the Firth of Forth.
Now take the path around the hill and soon you will get the best view of Arthur’s Seat in the whole city. It’s certainly my favourite view of the great hill in the Queen’s Park. Continuing around the path will take you to the Nelson Monument, where you can stop for a coffee before ascending to the top of the monument for more great views.
Leaving the monument continue toward the gate in the wall surrounding the Observatory but this time enter the magnificent building and explore the little bookshop and the old telescope.
How long does it take to walk up Calton Hill?
It only takes about 5-10 minutes to get to the top of Calton Hill as there is set of steps that will take you to the top.
If steps are hard for you there is a road beyond the steps. Follow Regent Road as it hugs the hill and take the left fork in the road as it curls behind the old Royal High School to get to the hill.
Get to Calton Hill by walking from the east end of Princes Street, near Waverley Station. Head toward the hill and Princes Street turns into Waterloo Place, built in the early 19th century as the grand new eastern entrance into Edinburgh.
When you’re walking up Waterloo Place you’ll progress over the Regent Bridge which takes the road across the deep ravine through which Calton Road runs some 60ft (18m) below.
Just beyond the Regent Bridge you’ll come to the hill and on your left are the steps that will take you to the top. Walking up the steps will bring you to the top in about five minutes.
Once on top of Calton Hill apart from the wonderful views of Edinburgh that open up, you’ll also see many famous monuments on the hill. They’re described in my post about Edinburgh Monuments but I’ll list them here too:
They are:
National Monument
Nelson Monument
Dugald Stewart Monument
Playfair Monument
Scottish Parliament Monument
Calton Hill Monuments
The Nelson Monument
The Nelson Monument stands 105ft (32m) high on the highest point of Calton Hill and commemorates Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson was killed in the battle and the monument to him and his victory was completed in 1816.
There’s a little coffee shop in the monument and if you feel up to it, you can climb the 143 steps to the top and gaze at the wonderful view of Edinburgh.British admiral of the fleet who was killed in action during the and his victory over the.
If you’re there around one o’clock, watch for the huge time ball at the top of the monument to slowly rise to the top just a few minutes before one, before falling in time with the firing of the one o’clock gun at Edinburgh Castle.
The ball is a visual signal and the gun an audible signal for ships at anchor in the Firth of Forth that it’s one o’clock and that it’s time to calibrate their chronometers.
The National Monument
The National Monument was built in 1829 to commemorate the dead of the Napoleonic Wars, which had ended 14 years previously.
The design is based on the Parthenon in Athens (no surprise for the “Athens of the North”) but if you visit it, you will see that it is not finished. Construction of the monument started in 1826 but by 1829 there was no money left and construction was stopped. It never resumed.
Because it’s half-finished, it was often referred to disparagingly as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace” and other such names. Various suggestions have been made over the years to finish the monument but all have come to nothing and it’s unlikely that it ever will.
Inscribed on the monument is “A Memorial of the Past and Incentive to the Future Heroism of the Men of Scotland”
It may be unfinished but I like it. It’s still a monument to the dead, half-finished or not and its position makes it seen for miles around.
The Dugald Stewart Monument
The monument that commemorates the Scottish Enlightenment’s mathematician and philosopher is also based on Greek architecture, this time the and is remembered by the monument on Calton Hill.
The monument can easily be seen from the east end of Edinburgh city centre and was designed by William Henry Playfair. As with Hamilton’s Burns Monument, Playfair also based Stewart’s monument on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, erected in Athens in 334BC.
Stewart was a disciple of Adam Smith and when Smith died he wrote the first biography of Smith entitled, Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith.
Playfair Monument
The Playfair Monument was designed by William Henry Playfair for his uncle, John Playfair. Playfair was a figure of the Scottish Enlightenment; a geologist, mathematician and a philosopher. He was the first president of the Edinburgh Astronomical Institution and in 1783 was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
It was Playfair who was instrumental in the building of the Observatory on Calton Hill and as you will see, his statue was placed on the wall of the observatory, which was also designed by WH playfair.
It’s no longer a working observatory (for that you need to visit Blackford Hill) but you can still visit it and see the old 22” telescope. The observatory was refurbished by Edinburgh Council and now houses the Collective Gallery, a contemporary art centre, bookshop and restaurant.
Vigil For The Scottish Parliament Monument
This is actually a cairn, built on the south east part of Calton Hill during a long vigil of 1,980 days from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, the Scottish people voted Yes in a referendum to restore Scotland’s parliament, which had been adjourned following the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England in 1707.
The cairn has a brazier on the top, where a fire was kept lit during the vigil. At the base of the monument is an inscription from a poem by Hugh McDiarmid:
For we ha’e faith
in Scotland’s hidden poo’ers
The present’s theirs
but a’ the past and future’s oors.
Calton Hill Burial Grounds
There are actually two burial grounds (cemeteries) on Calton Hall and Regent Road, the road that circles the south side of the hill. The Old Burial Ground and the New Burial Ground.
Old Calton Burial Ground
The Old Calton Burial Ground originally stretched across Waterloo Place, the approach road to the hill from Princes Street. When the street was proposed to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and to provide a new entrance to Edinburgh from the east, the plan cut right through the burial ground.
In order to accommodate the road, the bodies in the burial ground were exhumed and, along with their headstones, moved to a new patch of ground on the south side of the road, called the New Calton Burial Ground.
Both parts of the old burial ground are still there today. One part can be accessed from the street called Calton Hill, the extremely steep street that runs around the side of the hill from Leith Street to Waterloo Place. The old village of Calton was located at the bottom of the street.
The other part of the burial ground is accessed through a gate in a screen wall from Waterloo Place. In this part of the burial ground are the graves of many famous Scots as well as the Martyrs Monument and the American Civil War Memorial.
The American Civil War Memorial is the only memorial to the American Civil War outside of the United States and depicts a statue of Abraham Lincoln with a freed slave giving thanks at his feet.
The memorial, which is located by the tomb of the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume, was paid for by Americans to give thanks to the Scots who fought on the Union side during the war.
An inscription on the monument reads: To preserve the jewel of liberty in the framework of Freedom is a quotation of Lincoln’s.
New Calton Burial Ground
Strictly speaking this is not on Calton Hill itself but is on the other side of Regent Road and this is where the remains, gravestones and tombs were moved from the old burial ground that was destroyed by the building of Waterloo Place. It was opened to the public in 1820.
It is large cemetery and is a lovely haven to escape the busy roads of the city. Being on the south side of the Calton Hill, it has wonderful views across to Arthur’s Seat in the Queen’s Park and of the Scottish Parliament.
It also has some interesting tombs and towers to see, not least of which is the watchtower near the entrance. The watchtower was built to guard against grave robbers that were prevalent at the time.
The famous Edinburgh medical schools, concerned about a lack of bodies for their anatomy classes had let it be known that a body brought to the school would be paid for handsomely, with no questions asked.
This led to criminals raiding graveyards for bodies necessitating the posting of guards and watchtowers in the cemeteries. You will see another example of a grave robber watchtower in St Cuthbert’s church burial ground in Lothian Road.