Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. It is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh had a population of 506,520 in 2020, making it the second-most-populous city in Scotland (behind Glasgow) and the seventh-most-populous in the United Kingdom. The wider metropolitan area had a population of 912,490 in the same year.
Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the highest courts in Scotland, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. It is also the annual venue of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scottish law, literature, philosophy, the sciences and engineering. The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1582 and is now one of four universities in the city. The financial centre of Scotland, Edinburgh was ranked as the second-largest financial centre in the United Kingdom, the fourth-largest in Europe, and the thirteenth-largest in the world in the Global Financial Centres Index in 2020.
The city is a cultural centre, and is the home of institutions including the National Museum of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, and the Scottish National Gallery. The city is also known for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, the latter being the world's largest annual international arts festival. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, St Giles' Cathedral, Greyfriars Kirk, Canongate Kirk and the extensive Georgian New Town built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Old Town and the New Town are together listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and the site has been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. The city's historical and cultural attractions have made it Britain's second-most-visited tourist destination, attracting 5.3 million visits, including 2.4 million from overseas, in 2023.
Edinburgh is governed by the City of Edinburgh Council, a unitary authority. The City of Edinburgh council area had an estimated population of 531,370 in 2025, and includes outlying towns and villages. The city is in the Lothian region and was historically part of the shire of Midlothian (also called Edinburghshire).
Etymology
"Edin", the root of the city's name, derives from Eidyn, the name for the region in Cumbric, the Brittonic Celtic language formerly spoken there. The name's meaning is unknown. The district of Eidyn was centred on the stronghold of Din Eidyn, the dun or hillfort of Eidyn. This stronghold is believed to have been located at Castle Rock, now the site of Edinburgh Castle. A siege of Din Eidyn by Oswald, king of the Angles of Northumbria in 638 marked the beginning of three centuries of Germanic influence in south east Scotland that laid the foundations for the development of Scots, before the town was ultimately subsumed in 954 by the kingdom known to the English as Scotland. As the language shifted from Cumbric to Northumbrian Old English and then Scots, the Brittonic din in Din Eidyn was replaced by burh, producing Edinburgh. In Scottish Gaelic din becomes dùn, producing modern Dùn Èideann.
Nicknames
The city is nicknamed Auld Reekie, Scots for Old Smoky, for the views from the country of the smoke-covered Old Town. A note in a collection of the works of the poet Allan Ramsay explains, "Auld Reeky...A name the country people give Edinburgh, from the cloud of smoke or reek that is always impending over it." In Walter Scott's 1820 novel The Abbot, a character observes that "yonder stands Auld Reekie—you may see the smoke hover over her at twenty miles' distance". Thomas Carlyle comments on the phenomenon: "Smoke cloud hangs over old Edinburgh, for, ever since Aeneas Silvius's time and earlier, the people have the art, very strange to Aeneas, of burning a certain sort of black stones, and Edinburgh with its chimneys is called 'Auld Reekie' by the country people". The 19th-century historian Robert Chambers asserted that the sobriquet could not be traced before the reign of King Charles II in the late 17th century. He attributed the name to a Fife laird, Durham of Largo, who regulated the bedtime of his children by the smoke rising above Edinburgh from the fires of the tenements. "It's time now bairns, to tak' the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder's Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!".
Edinburgh has been popularly called the Athens of the North since the early 19th century. References to Athens, such as Athens of Britain and Modern Athens, had been made as early as the 1760s. The similarities were seen to be topographical but also intellectual. Edinburgh's Castle Rock reminded returning grand tourists of the Athenian Acropolis, as did aspects of the neoclassical architecture and layout of New Town. In 1818, naturalist Edward Daniel Clarke called Edinburgh "a very correct model of a Grecian city", pointing out perceived similarities between both cities and their ports (respectively, Leith and Piraeus). Intellectually, the Scottish Enlightenment, with its humanist and rationalist outlook, was influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy. In 1822 the Scottish landscape painter Hugh William Williams organised an exhibition that showed his paintings of Athens alongside views of Edinburgh, and the idea of a direct parallel between both cities quickly caught the popular imagination. When plans were drawn up in the early 19th century to architecturally develop Calton Hill, the design of the National Monument directly copied Athens' Parthenon. Tom Stoppard's character Archie of Jumpers said, perhaps playing on Reykjavík meaning "smoky bay", that the "Reykjavík of the South" would be more appropriate.
The city has also been known by several Latin names, such as Edinburgum, while the adjectival forms Edinburgensis and Edinensis are used in educational and scientific contexts.
Edina is a late 18th-century poetical form used by the Scottish poets Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. "Embra" or "Embro" are colloquialisms from the same time, as in Robert Garioch's Embro to the Ploy.
Ben Jonson described it as "Britaine's other eye", and Sir Walter Scott referred to it as "yon Empress of the North". Robert Louis Stevenson, also a son of the city, wrote that Edinburgh "is what Paris ought to be".
History
Early history
The earliest known human habitation in the Edinburgh area was at Cramond, where evidence was found of a Mesolithic camp site dated to c. 8500 BC. Traces of later Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have been found on Castle Rock, Arthur's Seat, Craiglockhart Hill, and the Pentland Hills.
When the Romans arrived in Lothian at the end of the 1st century AD, they found a Brittonic Celtic tribe whose name they recorded as the Votadini. The Votadini transitioned into the Gododdin kingdom in the Early Middle Ages, with Eidyn serving as one of the kingdom's districts. During this period, the Castle Rock site, thought to have been the stronghold of Din Eidyn, emerged as the kingdom's major centre. The medieval Welsh-language poem Y Gododdin describes a war band from across the Brittonic world who gathered in Eidyn before a fateful raid; this may describe a historical event around 600AD.
In 638 the Gododdin stronghold was besieged by forces loyal to King Oswald of Northumbria, and around this time, control of Lothian passed to the Angles. Their influence continued for the next three centuries until around 950, when, during the reign of Indulf, son of Constantine II, the "burh" (fortress), named in the 10th-century Pictish Chronicle as oppidum Eden, was abandoned to the Scots. It thenceforth remained, for the most part, under their jurisdiction.
The royal burgh was founded by King David I in the early 12th century on land belonging to the Crown, though the date of its charter is unknown. The first documentary evidence of the medieval burgh is a royal charter, c. 1124–1127, by King David I granting a toft in burgo meo de Edenesburg to the Priory of Dunfermline. The shire of Edinburgh seems also to have been created during David's reign, possibly covering all of Lothian at first, but by 1305 the eastern and western parts of Lothian had become Haddingtonshire and Linlithgowshire, leaving Edinburgh as the county town of a shire covering the central part of Lothian, which was called Edinburghshire or Midlothian (the latter name being an informal, but commonly used, alternative until the county's name was legally changed in 1947).
During the 12th century, human pressures on woodland resources left the land surrounding Edinburgh almost treeless, and the burgh had to resort to peat for fuel.
Edinburgh was largely under English control from 1291 to 1314 and from 1333 to 1341, during the Wars of Scottish Independence. When the English invaded Scotland in 1298, Edward I of England chose not to enter Edinburgh but passed by it with his army.
In the middle of the 14th century the French chronicler Jean Froissart described it as the capital of Scotland (c. 1365), and James III (1451–1488) referred to it in the 15th century as "the principal burgh of our kingdom". In 1482 James III "granted and perpetually confirmed to the said Provost, Bailies, Clerk, Council, and Community, and their successors, the office of Sheriff within the Burgh for ever, to be exercised by the Provost for the time as Sheriff, and by the Bailies for the time as Sheriffsdepute conjunctly and severally; with full power to hold Courts, to punish transgressors not only by banishment but by death, to appoint officers of Court, and to do everything else appertaining to the office of Sheriff; as also to apply to their own proper use the fines and escheats arising out of the exercise of the said office." Despite being burnt by the English in 1544, Edinburgh continued to develop and grow, and was at the centre of events in the 16th-century Scottish Reformation and 17th-century Wars of the Covenant. In 1582 Edinburgh's town council was given a royal charter by King James VI and I permitting the establishment of a university; founded as Tounis College (Town's College), the institution developed into the University of Edinburgh, which contributed to Edinburgh's central intellectual role in subsequent centuries.
17th century
In 1603 King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England, an event known as the Union of the Crowns, though the two kingdoms remained separate realms governed in personal union. In 1638 King Charles I's attempt to introduce Anglican church forms in Scotland encountered stiff Presbyterian opposition, culminating in the conflicts of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Subsequent Scottish support for Charles II's restoration to the throne of England resulted in Edinburgh's occupation by Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England forces – the New Model Army – in 1650.
In the 17th century Edinburgh's boundaries were still defined by the city's defensive town walls. As a result, the city's growing population was accommodated by increasing the height of the houses. Buildings of 11 storeys or more were common, and have been described as forerunners of the modern-day skyscraper. Most of these old structures were replaced by the predominantly Victorian buildings seen in today's Old Town. In 1611 an act of parliament created the High Constables of Edinburgh to keep order in the city, thought to be the oldest statutory police force in the world.
18th century
Following the Treaty of Union in 1706, the Parliaments of England and Scotland passed Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707 respectively, uniting the two kingdoms in the Kingdom of Great Britain effective from 1 May 1707. As a consequence, the Parliament of Scotland merged with the Parliament of England to form the Parliament of Great Britain, which sat at Westminster in London. The Union was opposed by many Scots, resulting in riots in the city.
By the first half of the 18th century, Edinburgh was described as one of Europe's most densely populated, overcrowded, and unsanitary towns. Visitors were struck by the fact that the social classes shared the same urban space, even inhabiting the same tenement buildings; although here a form of social segregation did prevail, whereby shopkeepers and tradesmen tended to occupy the cheaper-to-rent cellars and garrets, while the more well-to-do professional classes occupied the more expensive middle storeys.
During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Edinburgh was briefly occupied by the Jacobite "Highland Army" before its march into England. After its eventual defeat at Culloden, there followed a period of reprisals and pacification, largely directed at the rebellious clans. In Edinburgh, the Town Council, keen to emulate London by initiating city improvements and expansion to the north of the castle, reaffirmed its belief in the Union and loyalty to the Hanoverian monarch George III by its choice of names for the streets of the New Town: for example, Rose Street and Thistle Street; and for the royal family, George Street, Queen Street, Hanover Street, Frederick Street and Princes Street (in honour of George's two sons). The consistently geometric layout of the plan for the extension of Edinburgh was the result of a major competition in urban planning staged by the Town Council in 1766.
In the second half of the century, the city was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, when thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, James Hutton and Joseph Black were familiar figures in its streets. Edinburgh became a major intellectual centre, earning it the nickname "Athens of the North" because of its many neo-classical buildings and reputation for learning, recalling ancient Athens. In the 18th-century novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett one character describes Edinburgh as a "hotbed of genius". Edinburgh was also a major centre for the Scottish book trade. The highly successful London bookseller Andrew Millar was apprenticed there to James McEuen.