The Royal Mile is a succession of streets forming the main thoroughfare of the Old Town of the city of Edinburgh in Scotland. The term was first used descriptively in W. M. Gilbert's Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century (1901), describing the city "with its Castle and Palace and the royal mile between", and was further popularised as the title of a guidebook by R. T. Skinner published in 1920, "The Royal Mile (Edinburgh) Castle to Holyrood(house)".
View looking east down the Royal Mile past the old Tron Kirk
Castlehill forming part of the Royal Mile. The former Victorian church houses The Hub, an information service for the Edinburgh International Festival. On the right is The Scotch Whisky Experience and on the left the Camera Obscura tower and shops.
Looking down the High Street towards the Tron Kirk, the section rebuilt in 1828 following the Great Fire of Edinburgh (1824)
The Heart of Midlothian
The Old Town is the name popularly given to the oldest part of Scotland's capital city of Edinburgh. The area has preserved much of its medieval street plan and many Reformation-era buildings. Together with the 18th/19th-century New Town, and West End, it forms part of a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Old Town seen from Princes Street
Cockburn Street in Edinburgh
Image of the Old Town from Calton Hill taken from page 179 of 'Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes' (1896) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Etchings by A. Brunet-Debaines from drawings by S. Bough and W. E. Lockhart.
Buildings in the High Street