Cowgate

Chambers Street is a street in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the southern extremity of the Old Town. The street is named after William Chambers of Glenormiston, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh who was the main proponent of the Edinburgh Improvement Act (1867) which led to its creation in 1870. A narrow lane named North College Street and three residential squares built in the 18th century—Adam Square, Argyle Square and Brown Square—disappeared in the process. The street is dominated by University and museum buildings. It also hosts a variety of restaurants and venues.

Adam House is a Category B listed building in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is owned by the University of Edinburgh, and used as studio spaces for the architecture school. It consists of 4 studio spaces and a lecture theatre. The four storey building with basement, at 5 and 6 Chambers Street, was built in a modern neo-classical style by William H Kininmonth, a leading Scottish exponent of Modernism, and dates to 1954. It includes a 164-seat basement theatre space, as well as the architecture studios. These were built to the rear of the building to limit traffic and other noise pollution.The building's name commemorates Adam Square, one of the three 18th century residential squares built to make way for Chambers Street as part of the 1867 City Improvement Act.As well as its use as an examination hall, it is also used as a venue for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, where for many years it was operated by the company C venues. For the 2019 Fringe, rival promoters Gilded Balloon took over the building.

The Edinburgh Vaults or South Bridge Vaults are a series of chambers formed in the nineteen arches of the South Bridge in Edinburgh, Scotland, was part of the South Bridge Act 1785 and was completed in 1788. For around 30 years, the vaults were used to house taverns, workshops for cobblers and other tradesmen, as well as storage space for said merchants. In later years, the vaults were a hotspot for the homeless and for criminal activity such as illegal gambling taverns, illegal whisky distillery and, according to rumour, bodysnatchers stored corpses there overnight. There is however no proof that the grave robbers Burke and Hare ever used the vaults. As the conditions in the vaults deteriorated, mainly because of damp and poor air quality, the businesses left in the 1820s and the very poorest of Edinburgh's citizens moved in, though by around 1860, even they are believed to have left too. That people had lived there was only discovered in 1985 during an excavation, when middens were found containing toys, medicine bottles, plates, and other signs of human habitation.

South Bridge is a road bridge and street in Edinburgh, Scotland, between the High Street and Chambers Street/Infirmary Street. It extends to North Bridge at the north and Nicolson Street at the south, forming a level roadway over the steep valley scoured parallel to the High Street when the crag and tail landscape was formed. The Cowgate roadway along the bottom of the valley runs under the largest arch of the bridge. The South Bridge Act 1785 was passed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 21 April 1785 and in 1789 taxes were raised to fund the South Bridge to a plan prepared by Robert Adam. The bridge was completed in 1788. It is constructed of nineteen arches, but is almost entirely enclosed by buildings on both sides, exposing only the largest arch where the street crosses the Cowgate. Below deck level are many buildings and vaults, the latter are now something of a tourist attraction. Most of the buildings on the deck level have separate entrances (and sometimes entirely separate functions) at the level of the street passing below (the Cowgate) or parallel to the bridge (Niddry Street and Blair Street). Initially, town plans such as John Ainslie's 1804 map showed the street name as "South Bridge Street", by the 1850s the name had been shortened to "South Bridge".

The Tron Kirk is a former principal parish church in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is a well-known landmark on the Royal Mile. It was built in the 17th century and closed as a church in 1952. Having stood empty for over fifty years, it was used as a tourist information centre for several years in the mid 2000's and, more recently, was the site of the Edinburgh World Heritage Exhibition and John Kay’s book and gift shop. The name comes from the weighing beam ("tron" in Scots), serving the public market on the Royal Mile, which stood outside until around 1800. It is the only Scottish church where five consecutive ministers each served at least once as Moderator of the General Assembly (eight if including second charge ministers).

The Great Fire of Edinburgh was one of the most destructive fires in the history of Edinburgh. It started on Monday, 15 November 1824, and lasted for five days, with two major phases.

Talbot Rice Gallery is the public art gallery of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. With a 19th-century former natural history museum and a contemporary white cube gallery.

The Collegiate Church of St Mary in the Fields (commonly known as Kirk o' Field) was a pre-Reformation collegiate church in Edinburgh, Scotland. Likely founded in the 13th century and secularised at the Reformation, the church's site is now covered by Old College. The Augustinian monks of Holyrood Abbey held superiority over the church and likely founded it as a centre of education in the 13th century. The church appears to have been raised to collegiate status in the early 16th century. Around this time, recetion of the Flodden Wall brought the church just within the bounds of the city and overlooking the Potterow Port, which was also known as the Kirk o' Field Port. After the church was secularised at the Reformation, the town council acquired its land and provostry. The area became the first site of the town's college: later, the University of Edinburgh. The church is also notable for its association with the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, which took place in the vicinity in 1567. Contemporary illustrations show the church as possessing a saddle-roofed tower. The most detailed illustration, from 1567, also shows a tall choir and lower nave and transept. The church's ruins were removed in the early 17th century. The site is now covered by Old College. Excavations of Old College quadrangle in 2010 found remains that may be associated with the church. In 1969 a church on The Pleasance, Edinburgh, adopted the name Kirk o' Field Parish Church, it is now the Greyfriars Charteris Centre.

Edinburgh Law School, founded in 1707, is a school within the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom dedicated to research and teaching in law. It is located in the historic Old College, the original site of the University. Two of the twelve currently sitting Supreme Court of the United Kingdom justices are graduates of Edinburgh, including the current President and Deputy President. In 2014, the Research Excellence Framework commissioned by the UK government, ranked the University of Edinburgh 1st in Scotland and 4th in the UK. The 2022 league table rankings from The Guardian placed Edinburgh at 10th in the UK. The 2022 Complete University Guide league rankings placed Edinburgh at 8th in the UK. The 2018 The Times league rankings placed Edinburgh at 11th in the UK.

Old College is a late 18th-century building of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located on South Bridge, and presently houses parts of the University's administration, the University of Edinburgh School of Law, and the Talbot Rice Gallery. Originally called the "New College", it was designed by Robert Adam to replace a number of older buildings.

The University of Edinburgh (Scots: University o Edinburgh, Scottish Gaelic: Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as Edin. in post-nominals) is a public research university in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 and officially opened in 1583, it is one of Scotland's four ancient universities and the sixth-oldest university in continuous operation in the English-speaking world. The university played an important role in Edinburgh becoming a chief intellectual centre during the Scottish Enlightenment and contributed to the city being nicknamed the "Athens of the North".The university is a member of several associations of research-intensive universities, including the Coimbra Group, League of European Research Universities, Russell Group, Una Europa, and Universitas 21. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2021, it had a total income of £1,175.6 million, of which £324.0 million was from research grants and contracts, with the third-largest endowment in the UK, behind only Cambridge and Oxford. The university has five main campuses in the city of Edinburgh, which include many buildings of historical and architectural significance such as those in the Old Town.Edinburgh receives over 60,000 undergraduate applications per year, making it the second-most popular university in the UK by volume of applications. It is the eighth-largest university in the UK by enrolment, with 35,375 students in 2019/20. Edinburgh had the seventh-highest average UCAS points amongst British universities for new entrants in 2019. The university continues to have links to the British royal family, having had Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as its chancellor from 1953 to 2010 and Anne, Princess Royal since March 2011.The alumni of the university include some of the major figures of modern history. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell, naturalist Charles Darwin, philosopher David Hume, and physicist James Clerk Maxwell studied at Edinburgh, as did writers such as Sir J. M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The university counts several heads of state and government amongst its graduates, including three British Prime Ministers. Three Supreme Court Justices of the UK were educated at Edinburgh, as were several Olympic gold medallists. As of October 2021, 19 Nobel Prize laureates, three Turing Award winners, two Pulitzer Prize winners, and an Abel Prize laureate and Fields Medalist have been affiliated with Edinburgh as alumni or academic staff.

Tailor's Hall, is a historic building in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh's Old Town. It was built in 1621 by the Guild of Tailors. It is now in use as a Stay Central Hotel. The main hall was built in 1621, on the south side of the courtyard. Then in 1640, a range of crow-stepped buildings was built on the north side fronting on to the Cowgate. This block, Tailor's Land, was demolished circa 1940 despite attempts by the architect Robert Hurd and others to save it. In 1638 the protest of the National Covenant was drafted there by an assembly of between two and three hundred clergymen, and following the execution of Charles I in 1649, the hall was used as a courthouse of the Scottish Commissioners. The building was used as a playhouse between 1727 and 1753. When that closed, it became a storehouse of the Argyle Brewery. The building is category A listed. In 1998 the building was renovated and developed as the Tailors Hall Hotel, later the Central Hotel. In 2012 it was bought by the G1 Group a Scottish hospitality and leisure operator. After a refurbishment in 2014, Central Hotel was relaunched as STAY Central Hotel, a 3 star hotel with 37 bedrooms.