The High Kirk of Edinburgh, where Knox preached the Reformation and a woman allegedly threw a stool at a bishop.
Strictly it is not a cathedral. It was one twice, briefly, in the seventeenth century when episcopacy was imposed on Scotland, but the Church of Scotland is presbyterian and has no bishops, so it has no cathedrals. Its proper name is the High Kirk of Edinburgh. Everyone calls it St Giles’ Cathedral anyway.
The crown steeple, finished around 1500, is the thing you recognise from every photograph of the Royal Mile: eight flying buttresses meeting in an open stone crown. Only a handful survive anywhere and this is the best.
Knox and the Reformation
John Knox was minister here from 1559, and the Scottish Reformation was preached largely from this building. There is a statue of him inside, and his grave is somewhere under the car park in Parliament Square behind, marked by a small plaque in bay 23 — which is either an indignity or exactly what he would have wanted.
In 1637 Charles I attempted to impose an English-style prayer book. According to the tradition, a market trader named Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the dean and shouted that he would not say Mass in her ear. The riot that followed led to the National Covenant, signed the next year at Greyfriars, and from there to the Bishops’ Wars and eventually the civil wars across all three kingdoms. There is a plaque and a replica stool.
The story is probably later embroidery. The consequences were not.
The Thistle Chapel
Added in 1911 by Robert Lorimer for the Order of the Thistle, Scotland’s senior order of chivalry. It is a small, extraordinarily dense piece of Gothic Revival — carved oak stalls for the sixteen knights, each with its own crest above, a fan vault, and a carving of an angel playing the bagpipes high up on the left as you enter, which everyone hunts for.
Practicalities
Entry is by donation, and there is a separate charge for a photography permit if you want to take pictures inside — an arrangement that irritates some visitors and is clearly signed.
Services are held and sections close during them. There is a good café in the crypt, and free lunchtime recitals on the organ some days.
Outside on the pavement, the Heart of Midlothian is a mosaic marking the site of the Old Tolbooth, the prison and execution place. Locals spit on it. It is meant contemptuously and is now mostly done for luck.
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.