Calton Hill is the easiest big view in Britain: a five-minute climb from Princes Street and the whole of Edinburgh arranges itself below you, with a scatter of half-mad monuments on top for company. Come towards evening, when the light comes in low off the Forth and the day-trippers drift back down.
Take the stone stair beside the old Royal High School up onto the plateau. The Dugald Stewart Monument, a small circular temple on the west lip, is where every postcard of the city is shot — the Old Town and the castle framed dead centre. Then the National Monument, twelve roofless Doric columns begun in 1826 as a Parthenon for the war dead and abandoned, broke, three years later; the locals call it the Disgrace, and it is the best thing up here. Climb between the columns.
The Nelson Monument rises beside it, its telescope shape topped by a time-ball that still drops at one o'clock. Walk to the north rail for Leith, the Forth and Fife, then come down through Old Calton Burial Ground — Hume's tomb, Lincoln's statue — to Waverley.
