The Mound

The Mound is an artificial hill connecting Edinburgh's Old and New Towns — built up from roughly two million cartloads of earth excavated when the New Town was constructed in the late eighteenth century, dumped into the drained loch that once separated the two halves of the city. It now carries the road that climbs from Princes Street up toward the Royal Mile, and holds the two neoclassical buildings of the National Galleries of Scotland at its foot.

Photographed in May 2023 during a trip through Scotland. The Mound is one of those pieces of city that most people walk across without thinking about — but it is essentially the seam where the medieval city and the Georgian city were stitched together, and the view from it takes in both.