The West End: Charlotte Square and the Moray curves
Adam's grand square, the Georgian House, Moray Place's twelve sides, and a cathedral to close on. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Charlotte Square
Robert Adam's last great work, designed in 1791 as one unified palace front per side. Walk the north terrace slowly — the doors, fanlights and railings are the original kit. This is where the New Town stopped being a grid and started being architecture.

2. The Georgian House (No. 7)
The National Trust for Scotland's restored townhouse, furnished as a wealthy family kept it around 1800 — basement kitchen to drawing room. Go in if you want the interior of all this stone; otherwise the doorway alone tells you the rank. Check opening days before you rely on it.

3. Bute House
No. 6, the official residence of Scotland's First Minister, flush in the middle of the north terrace. No plaque shouts it; the point of the square is that no single house breaks the line. Walk past and you'd never know.

4. Moray Place
The centrepiece of the Earl of Moray's 1820s estate — a full twelve-sided circus of palace-fronted terraces around a private garden. Stand in the middle of the road (it's quiet) and turn a slow circle. The scale is deliberately overwhelming.

5. Ainslie Place and the curves
Moray's planner, James Gillespie Graham, strung Moray Place, Ainslie Place and Randolph Crescent into a sequence of linked ovals down the slope. Walk it as one curving move; the geometry only reads when you're inside it.

6. St Mary's Cathedral
Gilbert Scott's three-spired Episcopal cathedral closes the walk at the West End — the tallest building in the city centre and pure Gothic against all the Georgian restraint behind you. Step in for the height, then Haymarket is a short walk on.

The West End: Charlotte Square and the Moray curves