Princes Street Gardens

📌 New Town, City of Edinburgh
★★

The area between Edinburgh‘s Old and New Towns is often full of people in a hurry. Whether you’re usually dashing between the two parts of the city, running for a bus on Princes Street or sprinting out of Edinburgh Waverley station, slow down and take a moment to explore the deceptively roomy Princes Street Gardens. This sunken green valley on the shady side of Edinburgh Castle used to be covered by the putrid Nor Loch: a belt of marsh and pond polluted by sewage from the Old Town above. The whole area was drained and converted into parkland during construction of the New Town, with the railway squeezed alongside in 1846. Today it’s the city’s best known park, with two distinct parts separated by the Scottish National Gallery; the Victorian highlight of the west side is the colourful Ross Fountain (restored in 2018), while the east side contains the prominent spires of the Scott Monument. In recent winters large parts of the gardens have been occupied by Scotland’s biggest and best Christmas market: beloved by tourists, but less popular with some locals.