Waterloo Monument

Calton Hill Has a Partial Parthenon, a Telescope Memorial, and the Best View of Edinburgh You Are Not Taking

Calton Hill in central Edinburgh takes about 15 minutes to walk up from Princes Street and is consistently overlooked in favour of Arthur’s Seat, the larger volcanic hill further east. The oversight is useful for visitors who want a view: from the top of Calton Hill you look directly down the Royal Mile toward the Castle, across to the Firth of Forth, and on clear days to the Pentland Hills to the south. Arthur’s Seat, being further out, cannot replicate the direct city panorama.

The hill is topped with an unusual collection of 19th-century monuments that make it one of the stranger hilltops in any British city.

The Monuments

The National Monument of Scotland looks like it was abandoned halfway through construction because it was. Begun in 1826 as a reproduction of the Parthenon to commemorate Scottish soldiers who died in the Napoleonic Wars, funding ran out after twelve columns were erected. It has stood as a glorious fragment ever since, earning it the nicknames “Edinburgh’s Disgrace” and “Edinburgh’s Folly.” This is an ungenerous assessment. The incomplete colonnade is actually more interesting as a ruin than it would have been as a completed replica, and it raises legitimate questions about what ambition looks like when the money runs out.

The Nelson Monument is a naval telescope pointing skyward – a memorial to Admiral Horatio Nelson after Trafalgar (1805), built between 1807 and 1815. At 32 metres it can be climbed for the highest viewpoint on the hill. The time ball on top drops at 1pm, originally used to calibrate navigational instruments on ships in the Firth below. Open April to September.

The Dugald Stewart Monument (1831) and the Robert Burns Monument (1830) are classical temple structures honouring a philosopher and a poet respectively. The City Observatory (1818), designed by William Playfair, has been converted to a restaurant and cultural venue.

What Is and Is Not Here

Travel writing about Calton Hill sometimes references a “Waterloo Monument” specifically. There is no monument to the Battle of Waterloo or the Duke of Wellington on Calton Hill itself. The National Monument commemorates Napoleonic Wars casualties generally, not Waterloo specifically. The most famous Wellington monument in Edinburgh is the statue on Princes Street perpetually wearing a traffic cone placed there by students and periodically removed by the council.

The View and Edinburgh Beyond

Looking west at dusk, Edinburgh Castle sits on its volcanic crag at the end of the Royal Mile lit against the sky, one of the most dramatic urban views in Britain. The hill is unrestricted at all hours; the view from the National Monument at midnight on a clear night is worth experiencing.

The Scottish National Gallery on the Mound (15 minutes’ walk downhill) is free and has strong holdings in Dutch Old Masters, Scottish painting, and French Impressionism. Velazquez’s Old Woman Cooking Eggs is here, along with Turner, Raphael, and Poussin.

For whisky: Cadenhead’s on the Royal Mile has a comprehensive and un-hyped selection at reasonable prices; the Scotch Malt Whisky Society on Queen Street is more exclusive but worth knowing about.