The west end of the New Town is where the Georgian project got ambitious. Charlotte Square was Robert Adam's parting gift to the city, designed in 1791 so each side reads as a single palace rather than a row of houses — the moment Edinburgh stopped merely laying out streets and started composing them.
Begin on the square's north terrace. No. 7 is the Georgian House, opened up by the National Trust so you can see the basement kitchen and the drawing room as 1800 left them; No. 6, two doors along, is Bute House, where the First Minister lives — and nothing on the frontage gives it away, which is exactly the discipline Adam intended.
Then north into the Moray Estate, laid out in the 1820s on the Earl of Moray's pleasure ground. Moray Place is a twelve-sided circus; stand in the middle and turn a slow circle. Gillespie Graham linked it to Ainslie Place and Randolph Crescent in a chain of ovals down the brae — walk it as one curving move. Finish at St Mary's Cathedral, three Gothic spires answering the grid, with Haymarket just beyond.
