Edinburgh Castle

Mounted dramatically on the appropriately named Castle Rock, Edinburgh Castle has dominated the city skyline for over 1,000 years. I’m using this Wikipedia photo to illustrate the setting because, as you will see, the weather was considerably thicker the day we were there.

The castle included a royal residence until the 1600’s when England and Scotland were united, after which it continued as a predominantly military barracks.  Many of the buildings were destroyed in one or another siege; but St Margaret’s Chapel, the Royal Palace and the Great Hall survive – though with somewhat updated interiors.  The castle is Scotland’s most visited paid tourist site, much of this traffic coming from attendance at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, part of the Edinburgh International Festival.  As with many fortified sites, the approach to the castle occurs in stages, of which the first one seems peculiar.

 

 

This is the arena where the military tattoo is held. Its design interjects a football stadium ambiance into the otherwise historic setting. It’s a bit of a jarring juxtaposition which made me wonder if some more historic references could have been included or at least the seating could have been some other color than baby blue.

Hard to keep your mind in the 16th century with this as an entry sequence.

Another gate takes you out of the stadium environment and into the castle proper

And then, after you buy your ticket, yet another gate controls your progress into the more secure center.

This definitely feels more like a fortified passage able to be defended.  On the map below, this gate sits on the right hand side near the notation for ‘audio guides’.  You can see that the plan spirals ever more tightly in to the most secure castle location.

One of the cannons used to defend the castle has been re-purposed as a giant time piece, being fired once a day.

Obviously on this particular day you wouldn’t be aiming at anything in particular.  I’m not sure whether weather like this, common here, made it easier to attack or easier to defend the castle.  I liked the detailing of some of the buildings a lot – the use of darker, more regular stone to outline the forms of the roofs.  I also liked the freedom with which essentially symmetrical elevations have been skewed and shifted.  It makes you pay attention.

Here’s a detail, though, where the symmetrical form has been emphasized with the accents being in the way the light and dark stones are mixed in the facades.

St Margaret’s Chapel compressed its functions into a minimal space; but the details shone:

The great hall’s presence comes across clearly, though its appearance has been updated over the centuries.

Over all the site and its buildings gave a very clear impression of what the place has been – a very important but also very compressed series of activities occurring in their own world. For a more historically detailed description see this blog post from a Bit About Britain.