New Aberdeen

A Royal Burgh was established by the reign of David I in the middle of the twelfth century with Alexander II establishing a Guild of Merchants in New Aberdeen in 1222.

[1] It was a fishing and trading settlement where the river Denburn entered the Dee estuary.

[2] The area has some of the oldest streets in Aberdeen dating from the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in New Aberdeen's historic marketplace the Castlegate where Aberdeen's Mercat cross is situated.

[2] Marischal College was founded in 1593 on the site of a disused medieval Franciscan friary by George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal of Scotland as a more Protestant alternative to Old Aberdeen's King's College.

It was Scotland's second post-medieval "civic university", after the University of Edinburgh, created without a Papal bull and with a greater resemblance to the Protestant arts colleges of continental Europe[3] to train post-Reformation Kirk clergy.