A building that came in ten times over budget, three years late, won the Stirling Prize, and is free to walk into.
Scotland had no parliament between 1707 and 1999. The referendum of 1997 voted to bring one back, and the question of where to put it produced one of the most bruising architectural arguments in modern Britain.
The Catalan architect Enric Miralles won the competition in 1998 with a design that refused every obvious move. There is no dome, no portico, no axial approach. Instead the complex is a set of low, irregular buildings pushed into the base of Salisbury Crags, with roofs shaped — depending on which explanation you accept — like upturned boats, like leaves, or like the abstracted form of Scotland’s coastline. The window bays of the MSPs’ offices are said to be based on Raeburn’s painting of the skating minister.
Miralles died of a brain tumour in 2000, aged 45, and the client, First Minister Donald Dewar, died three months later. Neither saw it finished.
The cost
It was estimated at £10 to £40 million and cost around £414 million. It opened in 2004, three years late. The Fraser Inquiry into the overrun ran for months. It then won the Stirling Prize in 2005, which did not settle the argument and arguably restarted it.
Opinion in Scotland remains genuinely divided, and it is worth going in without having decided which side you are on. The interiors — particularly the Garden Lobby with its leaf-shaped roof lights, and the Debating Chamber’s suspended oak-and-steel roof — are far better than the photographs of the exterior suggest.
Visiting
Entry is free. Security is airport-style at the door.
Guided tours are free and run on non-sitting days — usually Mondays and Fridays, and daily during recess. They take about an hour and cover the Chamber, the Garden Lobby and a committee room. Book ahead online.
Watching business is the better option if you are here on a sitting day. Tickets for the public gallery are free and bookable; First Minister’s Questions, usually Thursday at noon, is the liveliest hour and books out first. Committee sessions are quieter and easier to get into.
There is a café, a shop and a good small exhibition on the history of the Scottish Parliament, including the original 1707 adjournment.
Outside
Walk round the back to see the building meet the crags directly, which is where Miralles’ idea actually lands. The Canongate Wall on the Royal Mile side is set with 26 stones from across Scotland carved with quotations — Burns, MacDiarmid, the Declaration of Arbroath — and is free and often ignored.
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St Giles' Cathedral
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