Ross McDowell / Tartan Compass
South of the Royal Mile, the University and the Meadows show Edinburgh growing through learning, medicine and public space rather than royal or commercial power alone.
The University and the Meadows bring together more than 400 years of learning with one of Edinburgh's great everyday green spaces. I particularly like the Meadows around Easter when the cherry blossom appears. It never lasts long enough, but it feels like a marker that the longer days are coming. Add students, sport, the old exhibition story, golf on neighbouring Bruntsfield Links and a few good places to eat nearby, and you can make a really enjoyable afternoon here without feeling as though you are following a conventional visitor trail.
The University of Edinburgh was founded by the Town Council in 1583, giving the city an unusually strong civic role in the creation of its university. By the eighteenth century it had become closely associated with the Scottish Enlightenment and internationally influential work in medicine, science, philosophy and geology. Old College grew from that expanding institution. Its foundation stone was laid in 1789 after the University had outgrown its earlier buildings, although wars and funding problems meant the project took decades to complete. Nearby, the Meadows occupy the ground of the former South or Borough Loch. Gradual drainage and later protection from building turned the area into a major piece of public open space as the surrounding Southside developed.
Old College's formal courtyard belongs to a university that began inside a much tighter civic setting. The scale tells part of the story of institutional growth. South of the University, the city opens into the Meadows. The ground is not leftover countryside but reclaimed and deliberately protected urban space. Lecture rooms, cafés, housing, paths, sport and open ground keep the historic university and the present-day student city visibly connected.
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