page_title: Calton Hill
section_title: Buildings and structures
hierarchical_section_title: Calton Hill / Buildings and structures
caption_attribution_description: English: The unfinished monument to the Scottish dead of the Napoleonic Wars has often been described as 'Edinburgh's disgrace'. The intention was to build a church which would be a replica of the Parthenon in Ancient Athens, but the money ran out.
context_page_description: Calton Hill is a hill in central Edinburgh, Scotland, situated beyond the east end of Princes Street and included in the city's UNESCO World Heritage Site. Views of, and from, the hill are often used in photographs and paintings of the city.
  Calton Hill is the headquarters of the Scottish Government, which is based at St Andrew's House, on the steep southern slope of the hill. The Scottish Parliament Building and other prominent buildings such as Holyrood Palace lie near the foot of the hill. Calton Hill is also the location of several iconic monuments and buildings: the National Monument, the Nelson Monument, the Dugald Stewart Monument, the old Royal High School, the Robert Burns Monument, the Political Martyrs' Monument and the City Observatory.
context_section_description: The Old Calton Burial Ground was the first substantial development on Calton Hill and lies on the south-western side of the hill. The philosopher David Hume is buried there. His tomb is engraved only with the year of his birth (1711) and death (1776), on the "simple Roman tomb" (a relatively large monument) which he prescribed.  The Political Martyrs' Monument is also in the burial ground.  This is in memory of five campaigners for political reform and universal suffrage who were convicted of sedition and sent in 1793 to Botany Bay, Australia.
  On the west side of Calton Hill is the street named Calton Hill.  Agnes Maclehose, better known as Robert Burns' Clarinda, lived at number 14 and died there in 1841.  Burns, Scotland's national poet, sent Clarinda many verses over several years in  unsuccessful (it is believed) attempts to seduce this beautiful married lady.
  Calton Hill was the location of the notorious Calton Jail, a complex comprising a Debtors' Prison, the Bridewell (1791–96) by Robert Adam (later replaced) and a Felons' Prison of 1815-17 by Archibald Elliot. The prisons were replaced by Saughton Prison and demolished in 1930 providing a site for St. Andrew's House, home to Scotland's senior civil servants. The sole surviving building is the castellated and turreted Governor's House by Elliot. The lower curtain walls of the prison are still visible on the south side of St. Andrew's House, above Calton Road.
  The eastern end of the ornate Regent Bridge is built into the side of the hill, crossing a deep gorge (at the bottom of which the opening scene from Trainspotting was shot) to connect the hill with Princes Street, now Edinburgh's main shopping street.  The engineer in charge of building Regent Bridge in 1815 was Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the author Robert Louis Stevenson.
  By the 1840s, a pipeline ran over the shoulder of Calton hill from the Edinburgh coal gas works on the Royal Mile at New Street to the Bonnington Chemical Works in Bonnington. The gasworks waste was pumped through the line and processed into useful products at Bonnington.
  The renowned Scottish architect William Henry Playfair was responsible for the elegant thoroughfare that encircles the hill on three sides. Comprising Royal Terrace, Carlton Terrace and Regent Terrace, the largest of the townhouses can be found on Royal Terrace. Playfair's plan is dated 1819 and the first house was built at what is now 40 Royal Terrace. Regent Gardens that cover over one half of the summit of the hill are privately administered by the local residents' association. Carlton Terrace was originally called Carlton (or Carleton) Place but changed in 1842 to fit in with the other Terraces.
  Most of the properties on the terraces are occupied as houses but on Royal Terrace there is a number of hotels, by far the largest being the Crowne Plaza Hotel while on Regent Terrace is located the United States Consulate. Royal Terrace with its views over Leith and the Firth of Forth was popular with early owners who were shipowners and traders in Leith. Some of these were involved in the whisky trade, Leith being a centre for whisky blending and storage, and for a time in the 19th century the street was known as Whisky Row. Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (the elder son of Charles X of France, last of the Bourbon kings) and his wife Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, (the daughter of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette), moved into what is now 22 (then 21) Regent Terrace in 1830. Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchess de Berry, sister in law of the Duc d'Angoulême, also lived at what is now 12 (then 11) Regent Terrace at that time.  Her young son, Henri, the Comte de Chambord, is said to have wept bitterly when his family left for Austria in 1832 as he had become very attached to Scotland.  The painter Francis Cadell, one of the Scottish Colourists, lived in 30 Regent Terrace from 1930-1935.  The western end of Regent Terrace was closed in 2001 to traffic because of security concerns about the United States Consulate.
  Playfair was responsible for many of the monumental 
caption: The National Monument seen from the Nelson Monument.
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