Timeline of Edinburgh

A hillfort on the rock. Bronze Age settlement on Castle Rock, the earliest occupation yet found on the crag.

Din Eidyn. A fortress of the Gododdin, a Brittonic people, stands on the rock. The Welsh poem Y Gododdin commemorates a war band that rode from here to disaster at Catraeth.

The Northumbrians take the rock. Edinburgh passes into the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, and the place-name survives the conquest.

A royal burgh. David I grants Edinburgh burgh status and founds Holyrood Abbey two years earlier, after — the story goes — a stag with a cross between its antlers.

St Margaret’s Chapel is built. The oldest surviving building in Edinburgh, raised by David I for his mother, and spared when Bruce slighted the castle in 1314.

Randolph takes the castle. Thomas Randolph scales the north face at night with thirty men and retakes it from the English. Robert the Bruce then orders it destroyed so it cannot be held against him again.

Edinburgh becomes the capital. After the murder of James I at Perth, the court settles here permanently.

Flodden, and the wall. James IV and much of the Scottish nobility are killed in Northumberland. Edinburgh throws up the Flodden Wall in panic, and it fixes the town’s boundaries for 250 years — which is why the Old Town grows upward.

The Reformation. Parliament abolishes papal authority. John Knox preaches at St Giles’, and Scotland becomes a Protestant country in the space of a year.

Mary returns from France. The nineteen-year-old queen lands at Leith to find a kingdom that has changed religion in her absence.

Rizzio is murdered at Holyrood. Mary’s secretary is dragged from her supper room and stabbed fifty-six times in front of her. She is six months pregnant with the future James VI.

The Union of the Crowns. James VI inherits the English throne and moves to London, returning to Scotland once in twenty-two years. Edinburgh keeps its parliament and loses its court.

The National Covenant. Thousands sign at Greyfriars in resistance to Charles I’s prayer book. The Bishops’ Wars follow, and from them the civil wars across three kingdoms.

Plague. The last great epidemic kills a large share of the Old Town’s population, and Mary King’s Close is among the streets worst affected.

The Act of Union. The Scottish parliament votes itself out of existence amid riots in the streets. Edinburgh remains the centre of Scotland’s law, church, universities and medicine, and loses its politics.

The Porteous Riots. A crowd storms the Tolbooth and lynches Captain John Porteous of the City Guard. Walter Scott used it to open The Heart of Midlothian.

Charles Edward Stuart holds the city. The Jacobite army occupies Edinburgh for five weeks and holds court at Holyrood — but never takes the castle, which holds out above them.

The Nor Loch is drained. Work begins on emptying the fetid lake in the valley, clearing the way for the New Town.

Craig’s plan is chosen. James Craig, aged 26, wins the competition for the New Town with a grid of three streets between two squares. It becomes the largest surviving Georgian townscape in the world.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. The first edition is published in Edinburgh in weekly parts.

Smith and Hume. Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations; David Hume dies in August, cheerfully and without religion, to the city’s considerable discomfort.

Hutton reads his theory of the earth. James Hutton presents to the Royal Society of Edinburgh the argument, drawn partly from Salisbury Crags, that the earth is immeasurably older than scripture allows.

George IV visits. Walter Scott stage-manages the first royal visit since 1650 as a tartan pageant, inventing a good deal of Highland ceremonial in the process and reviving the kilt as national dress.

The National Monument is begun. A full-size Parthenon is started on Calton Hill and abandoned three years later after twelve columns. Edinburgh has called it Scotland’s Disgrace ever since.

Burke and Hare. Sixteen murders committed to supply bodies to the anatomist Robert Knox. Burke is hanged before 25,000 people and publicly dissected; the Anatomy Act follows in 1832.

The Arthur’s Seat coffins. Boys hunting rabbits find seventeen miniature coffins with carved figures inside them in a rock recess. Nobody has ever explained them. Eight survive in the National Museum.

The Scott Monument is finished. Sixty-one metres of Gothic spire by George Meikle Kemp, a self-taught joiner who drowned in the Union Canal two years before completion.

Simpson discovers chloroform. James Young Simpson and two colleagues test it on themselves at 52 Queen Street and wake up under the table. Obstetric anaesthesia follows.

The One O’Clock Gun. First fired, with the time ball on Calton Hill, so ships in the Forth could set their chronometers by sound and sight.

The Forth Bridge opens. A cantilever railway bridge in red steel, 2.5 kilometres long, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Leith is absorbed. The port burgh is merged into Edinburgh by act of parliament, having voted against it by roughly five to one. Leithers still mention this.

The Festival, and the Fringe. The Edinburgh International Festival is founded as an act of postwar cultural reconstruction. Eight uninvited companies perform anyway and create the Fringe by accident.

The Stone of Destiny is taken. Four Scottish students remove it from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. It turns up at Arbroath four months later.

The Forth Road Bridge. The ferry across the Forth ends after some eight hundred years of service at Queensferry.

World Heritage. UNESCO inscribes the Old and New Towns together, as a pair rather than separately.

The Stone returns, and Dolly. The Stone of Destiny comes back to Edinburgh Castle after seven hundred years. In July, at the Roslin Institute outside the city, Dolly the sheep is born.

Devolution. Scotland votes yes to a parliament and yes to tax-varying powers, on turnout of about 60 per cent.

The parliament reconvenes. Winnie Ewing opens it with the words: the Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March 1707, is hereby reconvened.

Holyrood opens. Enric Miralles’ building is finished three years late and around ten times over budget. It wins the Stirling Prize the following year.

The independence referendum. Scotland votes 55 to 45 against independence on a turnout of 85 per cent, the highest ever recorded for a UK election or referendum.

The tram reaches Newhaven. The line is extended down Leith Walk, eleven years after the original route opened and long after the inquiry into its cost began.