A drained loch turned into a valley garden, with a railway hidden in the bottom of it and the castle rising straight out of one side.
Until the eighteenth century this valley held the Nor Loch, an artificial lake created in 1460 as part of the city’s defences and used thereafter as the Old Town’s sewer. It was where suspected witches were subjected to trial by water, and by the time it was drained between 1759 and 1820 it was, by all accounts, indescribable.
The spoil dug out of the New Town foundations went into it, and the Mound was built across it to link the two halves of the city. The rest became gardens.
The two halves
East Princes Street Gardens hold the Scott Monument and are the busy end, immediately beside Waverley station.
West Princes Street Gardens are larger, quieter and better. The Ross Fountain, a cast-iron confection of mermaids and walruses made in France for the 1862 Great Exhibition and bought by a gunmaker for the city, was restored in 2018 and is now painted in its original colours. It sits directly below the castle rock and is the single best photograph in Edinburgh.
Also here: the Ross Bandstand, an open-air venue used for Hogmanay and Festival concerts and long overdue for replacement; the floral clock near the Mound, planted with about 35,000 plants every year since 1903 and the oldest of its kind in the world; and the Scottish American Memorial, a bronze kilted soldier of 1927.
The railway
The valley floor carries the main line into Waverley, running in the bottom of the gardens. It is remarkably unobtrusive from above — you notice it mainly when a train appears from the tunnel under the Mound — and it is the reason Edinburgh’s central station is buried in a hole rather than announcing itself.
Through the year
In December the East Gardens are taken over by the Christmas Market and an ice rink, built on scaffolding over the slope. It is popular and it is contentious: the structures close much of the gardens for weeks and there have been repeated rows about planning permission and damage to the grass.
In summer the gardens fill the moment the sun appears, which in Edinburgh is a specific and recognisable event.
Practicalities
Free. Gates close at dusk, earlier in winter. Well maintained and largely accessible, though the slopes are real.
More Parks & Outdoors
Arthur's Seat and Holyrood Park
An extinct volcano 251 metres high, inside the city, with an Iron Age fort on it and a climb that takes forty minutes.
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Seventy acres and a Victorian glasshouse range, free to walk into, twenty minutes north of the New Town.