SH Archive The Athens of the North, a short tour

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NorthAthens
SH.org OP Date
2018-08-21 09:46:21
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Without wanting to give away too much info, I live in Edinburgh (hence the user name) This city is absolutely filled with stunning "Greco-Roman" architecture. It's become a small hobby of mine to snap pics of some of the nicest and grandest structures. Hope you enjoy mulling them over, I really don't think we built all of these, especially the ones with single piece columns (which I need to get better pics of,) but anyway for your discernment, here is Edinburgh, a city filled with this architecture and most of it blackened.

Welcome to Edinburgh or, as it's called, the Athen's of the North,

This is a view from North Bridge, the obelisk and complex in the distance never got completed and the extremely grand site is essentially empty. I think the buildings that line the Bridge speak for themselves.

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Next up are some classic examples of "Greco-Roman" (I might just start saying Atlantean from now on) structures

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This building really caught my eye, I only have my phone camera so not sure if detail will come though, but that statue is very Pagan-esque

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Here we have a massive column, blackened

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This building I thought was exceedingly beautiful. The statues are something straight out of Rome

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and finally, some buried buildings. The interesting part about these is they are New Town buildings, built to relieve the overcrowded Old Town in the late 1700s we are told. They were meticulously planned and for affulent people yet still they built their first floors below ground? In a lot of these buildings you enter at street level, go down two flights of stairs and there will be hidden gardens, several metres below street level. Just strange.

The view from the front:
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Up Close
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A series of front gardens, several feet below street level

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And the building these gardens belonged to, from the front

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I'm going to continue to take pics of any anomalous or ecxeedingly beautiful buildings I come across on my travels but there are a lot! At the minute I'm trying to figure out a way to distinguish what is true Atlantean architecture and what is copy-cat. An interesting thing about Edinburgh is we have always been told there is a whole city beneath us and there are guided tours to certain famous buried parts of the town (Mary's Kings Close being a famous one)

Anyway hope you enjoyed a look at these, I think one of the best things about this website is it has made me actually appreciate the environment I'm in and these fantastic structures.

This is a brief history of Edinburgh's New Town, I think the dates should be setting off alarm bells for some forum users
New Town History

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"The Town Council of Edinburgh, under the leadership of Provost George Drummond, created an architectural competition to design the New Town with the desire that this new design would reflect The Age of Enlightenment and prevent wealthier citizens from leaving the city and heading south to London – as well as attracting back the absentee noblemen who had already deserted Edinburgh for the English capital."
"Built in several stages from the 1760’s to the 1830’s, this New Town of Edinburgh was the largest planned city development in the entire world at the time and it proved to be an enormous success, both commercially in the sense of attracting business to the city and culturally, creating an aesthetic excitement about this new “Athens of the North” (Emphasis mine)

So in 200 years much of this new "Athens" was buried 1 story deep and blackened. I really don't think the industrial output of smoke was enough at the time to blacken a city, maybe specifically around railway lines, but the entire city? Any white old building in Edinburgh has been cleaned, you can see the jetwash damage on the stone

Finallly if there are any specific pics of buildings anyone would like please let me know and I'll see what I can do. I want to document the statues and old church buildings next.

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