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Photo: 瑞丽江的河水, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Palace is a royal residence, closed when the king is here for a week in July and for similar state occasions. It's been repeatedly smashed up and rebuilt, and the present building is mostly from the 1670s. Highlights are the grand stair, state apartments, throne room, Mary Queen of Scots Chambers (where bloodstains from the murder of Rizzio are still visible), King's Gallery a sample of the royal art collection, the ruin of Holyrood Abbey, and the palace gardens.
The Palace of Holyroodhouse, also known as Holyrood Palace, is the official residence of the monarch of the United Kingdom in Scotland. Located at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the opposite end to Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood has served as the principal royal residence in Scotland since the 16th century, and is a setting for state occasions and official entertaining.
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A unique building, designed by Spanish Catalan architect Enric Miralles, completed in 2004. It's either a daring showpiece of postmodern architecture or a national embarrassment or a bit of both, time will tell. Parliament meets Tu-Th and you can watch debates from the Public Gallery, ask for tickets at reception. First Minister's Question Time is normally Th noon-12:45PM, and you need to reserve this up to 7 days in advance. Waiting list places may be available from 10AM on the day, otherwise watch from the Overspill Room. On non-business days (M F Sa) you can view the debating chamber from the Public Gallery without tickets. In the lobby area there are often exhibitions.
Interactive natural history museum exhibiting the forces and features of our planet: volcanoes, polar ice, rainforests and so on. Opened in 1999, it's a tent-like structure on the former site of a gasworks and brewery.
This close was re-modelled in the 1970s to recreate a 17th-century physic and knot garden, a hidden quiet place in the busy city.
In 1687 James VII (II of England) chucked the Protestants out of Holyrood to convert it to a royal Roman Catholic chapel, the sort of behaviour that got him ousted from the monarchy the following year. The congregation moved to Infirmary St then to this building on its completion in 1691. From 1952 Queen Elizabeth II regularly attended when at Holyrood, and in 2011 her granddaughter Zara Phillips married former England rugby captain Mike Tindall here. Notables in its graveyard include George Drummond (1788-1866) co-founder of the New Town, poet Robert Fergusson (1750–1774), and economist Adam Smith (1723-90). Memorials also commemorate soldiers dying at Edinburgh Castle, for which this was the graveyard, and coachmen of the London-Edinburgh stagecoach, which had its terminus here.
Museum of city history in a mustard-hued mansion built in 1570.
This is housed in Canongate Tolbooth, the medieval centre for governance and justice (preferably gruesome) as Canongate was a separate jurisdiction until 1856. The museum covers the story of working class life, and of organised labour, from the late 18th century to the present.