Edinburgh

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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, , by King David I granting a toft in 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…

Geography

Situated in Scotland's Central Belt, Edinburgh lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city centre is southwest of the shoreline of Leith and inland, as the crow flies, from the east coast of Scotland and the North Sea at Dunbar. While the early burgh grew up near the prominent Castle Rock, the modern city is often said to be built on seven hills, namely Calton Hill, Corstorphine Hill, Craiglockhart Hill, Braid Hill, Blackford Hill, Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock, giving rise to allusions to the seven hills of Rome. Occupying a narrow gap between the Firth of Forth to the north and the Pentland Hills and their outrunners to the south, the city sprawls over a landscape which is the product of early volcanic activity and later periods of intensive glaciation. Igneous activity between 350 and 400 million years ago, coupled with faulting, led to the creation of tough basalt volcanic plugs, which predominate over much of the area. This process formed the distinctive Salisbury Crags, a series of teschenite cliffs between Arthur's Seat and the location of the early burgh. The residential areas of Marchmont and Bruntsfield are built along a series of drumlin ridges south of the city centre, which were deposited as the glacier receded. The nearest the river gets to the city centre is at Dean Village on the north-western edge of the New Town, where a deep gorge is spanned by Thomas Telford's Dean Bridge, built in 1832 for the road to Queensferry. The Water of Leith Walkway is a mixed-use trail that follows the course of the river for from Balerno to Leith. Excepting the shoreline of the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh is encircled by a green belt, designated in 1957, which stretches from Dalmeny in the west to Prestongrange in the east. With an average width of…

Most-observed species

• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16,707
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  15,566
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  14,474
• Herring Gull

  Larus argentatus Pontoppidan, 1763 · Aves
  12,583
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  12,229
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  12,105
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  10,960
• Western Jackdaw

  Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  10,593

Most recent

• M 3.9 — 2025-10-20
  29 km NW of Comrie, United Kingdom
• M 2.5 — 2018-08-30
  1 km ENE of Gourock, United Kingdom
• M 2.5 — 2005-12-31
  3 km WSW of Auchterarder, United Kingdom
• M 2.5 — 2003-06-20
  12 km NNW of Balfron, United Kingdom
• M 2.8 — 2003-06-20
  14 km NNW of Balfron, United Kingdom
• M 3 — 2003-06-20
  12 km NNW of Balfron, United Kingdom