Princes Street Gardens is a public park in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. The Gardens were created in two phases in the 1770s and 1820s following the long draining of the Nor Loch and the creation of the New Town. The Nor Loch was a large loch on the north side of the town, making expansion northwards difficult. It was heavily polluted from centuries of sewage draining downhill from the Old Town. In 1846 the railway was built in the valley to connect the Edinburgh-Glasgow line from Haymarket with the new northern terminus of the North British line from Berwick-upon-Tweed at Waverley Station.
The gardens run along the south side of Princes Street and are divided by The Mound. East Princes Street Gardens run from The Mound to Waverley Bridge, and cover 8.5 acres (34,000 m2). The larger West Princes Street Gardens cover 29 acres (120,000 m2) and extend to the adjacent churches of St. John's and St. Cuthbert's, near Lothian Road in the west.
The Gardens are the best known park in Edinburgh having the highest awareness and visitor figures for both residents and visitors to the city. Various concerts and other events are held at the Ross Bandstand including the Festival Fireworks Concert and during the city's Hogmanay celebrations.
Read more about Princes Street Gardens: History, Monuments, Winter Wonderland
Famous quotes containing the words princes, street and/or gardens:
“Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1985)