Sixty-one metres of blackened Gothic spire over a seated novelist, climbed by 287 steps that get narrower as you go.
Walter Scott died in 1832, and Edinburgh decided almost immediately that it needed to do something enormous about it. A competition was held; it was won by George Meikle Kemp, a self-taught carpenter and joiner who entered under a pseudonym because he had no architectural standing. He drowned in the Union Canal in 1844, two years before it was finished, and the monument was completed by his brother-in-law.
At 61 metres it is the largest monument to a writer anywhere in the world, which says something about both Scott’s nineteenth-century standing and Edinburgh’s self-image.
Why it is black
The stone is Binny sandstone from West Lothian, which contains oil shale. It absorbed soot heavily during the century when Edinburgh was known as Auld Reekie for the smoke of its chimneys, and the oil in the stone means the staining will not come out. Cleaning attempts in the 1990s risked destroying the surface and were abandoned. It is meant to be honey-coloured and it is not going to be again.
The statues
Sixty-eight figures from Scott’s novels and from Scottish history are carved into the structure — Rob Roy, the Lady of the Lake, Meg Merrilies, Mary Queen of Scots, Robert the Bruce, Burns and Byron. Under the arch, Scott himself sits in white Carrara marble with his deerhound Maida at his feet.
The climb
287 steps in a spiral, in four stages, with a gallery at each. The staircase narrows as it rises, and the last flight is 24 inches wide in places with people coming the other way. There is no lift and no way round it. Signs at the bottom are honest about this and should be believed.
The views from the upper galleries are excellent — straight down Princes Street, across to the castle, and over the New Town grid.
Practicalities
Ticketed, and cheap by Edinburgh standards. It is run by Edinburgh Museums along with the Museum of Edinburgh and the Writers’ Museum, and a joint arrangement may apply.
The gardens around it are free, and the monument is floodlit after dark, which is when it looks most like the Gothic rocket it is usually compared to.
More Landmarks
Edinburgh Castle
A fortress on a volcanic plug that has been besieged more often than anywhere else in Britain, holding the oldest crown jewels in the islands.
Palace of Holyroodhouse
The King's residence in Scotland, an abbey ruin behind it, and the room where Rizzio was stabbed fifty-six times.
The Scottish Parliament
A building that came in ten times over budget, three years late, won the Stirling Prize, and is free to walk into.