Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh

Princes Street Gardens is a public park in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle  1 . The Gardens were created in the 1820s following the long draining of the Nor Loch and the creation of the New Town. The Nor Loch was a large loch in the centre of the city. It was heavily polluted from centuries of sewage draining downhill from the Old Town. In the 1840s the railway was built in the valley, and Waverley Station opened in its present form in 1854.

The gardens run along the south side of Princes Street 21 and are divided by The Mound. East Princes Street 21 Gardens run from The Mound to Waverley Bridge, and cover 8.5 acres (34,000 m²). The larger West Princes Street 21 Gardens cover 29 acres (117,000 m²) and extend to the adjacent churches of St. John's and St. Cuthbert's, near Lothian Road in the west.

The Gardens are a popular meeting place in Edinburgh, and play host to regular concerts at the Ross Bandstand, particularly at the city's Hogmanay celebrations.

Monuments

Within the gardens, along the south side of Princes Street 21 are many statues and monuments. Most prominent is the gothic Scott Monument built in 1846 to honour Sir Walter Scott. In East Princes Street 21 Gardens there are also statues of explorer David Livingstone, publisher Adam Black and essayist Professor John Wilson. In the West Gardens are statues of poet Allan Ramsay, reformer Thomas Guthrie, obstetric pioneer James Young Simpson, as well as the Scottish American War Memorial, the Ross Fountain and Bandstand, and a popular floral clock.