Charlotte Square: Robert Adam's Last Masterpiece
Why is it significant?
Step into Charlotte Square at its south-east corner and turn slowly on the spot. Four sides of pale stone wrap around a circular garden of trees, and above the roofs on the west side floats a great green dome.
Key Facts
| Place | Charlotte Square: Robert Adam's Last Masterpiece |
|---|---|
| Address | Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DR, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95130, -3.20680 |
| Part of Walk | Edinburgh's New Town: Georgian Squares, Crescents and the Plan That Built a City |
| Generated | Generated |
Step into Charlotte Square at its south-east corner and turn slowly on the spot. Four sides of pale stone wrap around a circular garden of trees, and above the roofs on the west side floats a great green dome.
On Craig's plan this was going to be St George's Square, England's answer to St Andrew at the other end of George Street. It was renamed after Queen Charlotte, partly to avoid confusion with George Square, which already existed on the south side of the city. In 1791 the council asked the most famous architect of the age, Robert Adam, born across the Forth in Kirkcaldy, to design the façades. Adam died the following year. He never saw a single stone of it rise, and the square took about a quarter of a century to complete.
Adam had drawn a church for the west side as well, but the council decided it was too expensive. The domed church you see instead is St George's, by Robert Reid, finished in 1814. In the twentieth century it became an archive building, West Register House, so the square's grandest feature ended up holding paperwork.
In the middle of the garden rides Prince Albert, in bronze, by the sculptor John Steell. When Queen Victoria came to unveil her late husband's statue in 1876, she was so pleased that she knighted Steell on the spot. And from 1983 until 2019, every August, these private gardens filled with tents and readers as the home of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
One more birth to add to your list. Just around the corner, at 16 South Charlotte Street, on the 3rd of March 1847, a boy called Alexander Graham Bell was born... the future inventor of the telephone, whose father taught elocution in this city. Now walk up the east side of the square to the north side, and stand back far enough to see the whole of it at once.