Edinburgh built its university into the old town like a ship in a bottle — grand rooms threaded between tenements, a great Georgian quad reached through an arch you could walk past a hundred times. This is the walk through the learned city, short on distance and long on rooms worth standing in, and it works best in the afternoon when the museum light is good and the students are out.
Start on South Bridge, the viaduct that hides as a street, and turn into the Old College. Robert Adam designed the quad; Playfair finished it after Adam died, and the dome with its gilded figure is the full stop on the whole composition. The Talbot Rice Gallery inside is free and almost private. Then Chambers Street and the National Museum of Scotland — make straight for the Grand Gallery, all cast iron and daylight, and take the lift to the roof for the castle.
West to Greyfriars Kirkyard for the table-tombs and the small loyal dog, then up to Bristo Square and McEwan Hall, where the university is loudest. The buses out leave from the door.
