6 Best Sights in Edinburgh and the Lothians, Scotland

This section of the Royal Mile takes its name from the canons who once ran the abbey at Holyrood. Canongate—in Scots, gate means "street"—was originally an independent town, or burgh, another Scottish term used to refer to a community with trading rights granted by the monarch. In this area you'll find Canongate Kirk and its graveyard, Canongate Tolbooth, as well as the Museum of Edinburgh.

This street, the upper portion of the Royal Mile, was where alleged witches were brought in the 16th century to be burned at the stake. The cannonball embedded in the west gable of Castlehill's Cannonball Restaurant was, according to legend, fired from the castle during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie (1720–88)—though the truth is probably that it was installed there deliberately in 1681 as a height marker for Edinburgh's first piped water-supply system. Atop the Gothic Tolbooth Kirk, built in 1844 for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, stands the tallest spire in the city, at 240 feet. The church now houses the cheery Edinburgh Festival offices and a pleasant café known as the Hub.

With its high-end shops, upmarket bistros, and five-star hotels, all with handsome Georgian frontages, George Street is a more pleasant, less crowded thoroughfare for strolling than Princes Street. It also has a couple of points of interest. First, there's the statue of King George IV, at the intersection of George and Hanover streets, which recalls the visit of George IV to Scotland in 1822; he was the first British monarch to do so since King Charles II in the 17th century. Next, the Assembly Rooms, between Hanover and Frederick streets, are where Sir Walter Scott officially acknowledged having written the Waverley novels (the author had hitherto been a mystery, albeit a badly kept one). It's now a popular venue during the Fringe Festival.

The High Street (one of the five streets that make up the Royal Mile) is home to an array of impressive buildings and sights, including some hidden historic relics. Near Parliament Square, look on the west side for a heart mosaic set in cobbles. This marks the site of the vanished Old Tolbooth, the center of city life from the 15th century until the building's demolition in 1817. The ancient municipal building was used as a prison and a site of public execution, so you may witness a local spitting on the heart as one walks by—for good luck.

Just outside Parliament House lies the Mercat Cross (mercat means "market"), a great landmark of Old Town life. It was an old mercantile center, where royal proclamations were—and are still—read. Most of the present cross is comparatively modern, dating from the time of William Gladstone (1809–98), the great Victorian prime minister and rival of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81). Across High Street from the High Kirk of St. Giles stands the City Chambers, now the seat of local government. Built by John Fergus, who adapted a design of John Adam in 1753, the chambers were originally known as the Royal Exchange and intended to be where merchants and lawyers could conduct business. Note how the building drops 11 stories to Cockburn Street on its north side.

A tron is a weigh beam used in public weigh houses, and the Tron Kirk was named after a salt tron that used to stand nearby. The kirk (church) itself was built after 1633, when St. Giles's became an Episcopal cathedral for a brief time. In 1693 a minister here delivered an often-quoted prayer: "Lord, hae mercy on a' [all] fools and idiots, and particularly on the Magistrates of Edinburgh."

The second uppermost of the streets that make up the Royal Mile, this was formerly the site of the city's produce market, with a once-a-week special sale of wool and linen. Now it's home to historic Gladstone's Land and the Writers' Museum. At various times, the Lawnmarket Courts housed James Boswell, David Hume, and Robert Burns, while in the 1770s this area was home to the infamous Deacon Brodie, pillar of society by day and a murdering gang leader by night. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) may well have used Brodie as the inspiration for his novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The south side of this dominant New Town street is occupied by the well-kept Princes Street Gardens, which act as a wide green moat to the castle on its rock. The north side is now one long sequence of chain stores with mostly unappealing modern fronts, with one or two exceptions: most notably the handsome Victorian facade on the corner of South St. David Street.