Guide to Edinburgh Monuments

Updated June 2024. Why monuments in a city? Edinburgh has a rich heritage of public monuments. Who are represented – and who is not? This book is a journey of discovery uncovering who the monuments represent, summarizing their contributions. The journey starts along Princes Street and its gardens (Chapter 1) before proceeding to Chapters covering the New Town (2), Calton Hill(3), the Royal Mile (4), Leith (5) and the rest of the city (6). Individuals and groups have donated benches in memory of loved ones and events (for example celebrating marriage) and some are described in Chapter 7. But the objective of the book is more than an exploration of Edinburgh’s monuments, useful as that is. It poses questions. Why erect monuments? What do the monuments tell us about the city? Are their any themes to those represented? For example, Edinburgh is a capital city, a UNESCO City of Literature, a city famed for its Enlightenment period. Are these reflected in the monuments. Who deserves a monument? Chapter 8, the final chapter, raises these questions, providing ideas for reflection, whilst noting that there are many ways of remembering people and events other than monuments of stone or metal. The author has two versions of his book on Edinburgh monuments, this version with black and white photographs and smaller text font and smaller physical size than its companion "Discovering Edinburgh’s Monuments", both available on Amazon. This version is more suitable for carrying when exploring the monuments. The core information is the same in both versions. Both have the theme of a journey of exploration of the city’s monuments. An index at the end of the book facilitates searching for particular monuments of interest.