Edinburgh : A city of Romanticism – Aonghus MacKechnie
Romanticism helped shape Scotland's international identity. It profoundly influenced Scottish culture, inspired artistic and intellectual movements across Europe, and played a significant role in establishing the country's enduring appeal as a destination for visitors.
This book explores Edinburgh's most emblematic architecture during the long nineteenth century: the distinctive castellated, stone-built cityscape of Scotland's national revival. It reveals how, by the 1820s, Scotland had emerged as one of Europe's leading centres of Romanticism, inspired both by the dramatic landscapes of the Highlands and by Edinburgh itself, a city at the heart of the Romantic imagination.
Edinburgh also became the principal gateway for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the writings of James Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott. Among the many artists, architects, writers and cultural figures inspired by the city and its surroundings were Schinkel, Turner, Haydn, Mozart and Jules Verne, alongside countless other visitors who contributed to Scotland's growing international reputation.
Offering a valuable counterpoint to the extensively studied subject of Enlightenment Edinburgh, this book demonstrates how the city's Enlightenment and Romantic traditions developed side by side and continue to define its unique character. It examines the thinkers, artists, architects and patrons who shaped Edinburgh's Romantic vision, many of whom were deeply connected to the intellectual culture of the Scottish Enlightenment. Their legacy survives in the remarkable nineteenth-century architecture that forms much of the character of Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site and remains central to the city's architectural identity today.
Richly illustrated and grounded in original research, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the buildings, ideas and cultural forces that created one of Europe's most distinctive urban landscapes.
Professor Aonghus MacKechnie is a historian and heritage professional, who teaches Architectural Conservation at the University of Strathclyde, where he is based, and Edinburgh. He previously spent 40 years as a government adviser with Historic Environment Scotland, dealing with historic buildings, archaeology, historic landscapes and battlefields. His most recent books are Scotch Baronial: Architecture and National Identity in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2019, co-authored) and The Architecture of Scotland 1660-1750 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020, co-edited), while he is also co-author of Lothian (2024), in the Buildings of Scotland series
Author: Aonghus MacKechnie
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781848227170
Publication date: September 2026