Royal Terrace, Edinburgh

Royal Terrace is a grand street in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the north side of Calton Hill within the New Town and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1995,[1] built on the south side of a setted street, facing the sloping banks of London Road Gardens, formerly Royal Terrace Gardens, with views looking north towards Leith and the Firth of Forth.

Together with the adjoining Carlton and Regent Terraces, the three streets are in a continuous line, cut only by Carlton Terrace Lane giving access to mews, leading around the eastern end of Calton Hill and surrounding Regent Gardens, the largest of the private gardens of the New Town.

These streets, with Royal Terrace the grandest, were the showpiece of Playfair's conception for the Eastern New Town, intended to be grander than James Craig's original development.

Door entrances and windows on the ground floor are arched and surrounded by V-chamfered rusticated stone work.

[4][6][7] The long symmetrical facade alternates between colonnaded and un-colonnaded sections, from east to west, as follows:[4][6][7] Playfair hoped to attract "fashionable and wealthy people" to Calton Hill,[8] but almost immediately he encountered competition from new developments to the western end of the New Town, in particular the Moray Estate.

Royal Terrace was known in Edinburgh as 'Whisky Row', supposedly because merchants living there had an unobstructed view of their ships coming into Leith Harbour.

View of the western end of Royal Terrace, from London Road Gardens, formerly Royal Terrace Gardens
A section of Royal Terrace at the west end of the street, with six Ionic columns. This contains two townhouses: number 4 with the central entrance and two bays to the left, and number 3 with the right two bays and an entrance in the un-colonnaded section to the right (just out of view).
Panorama of Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, reaching from Carlton Terrace in the east (extreme left), to Greenside Church in the west (extreme right) — this is probably the longest Georgian terrace in Europe, a straight, continuous structure measuring 360 metres from east to west.
40 Royal Terrace, the first house to be built in 1821–1822, an example of a two-storey townhouse (with basement and attic) in a section without Greek columns
Entrance to 4 Royal Terrace with original fanlight above the door
Garden behind 11 Royal Terrace
Royal Terrace Mews, originally the stables for the street
Princes Street
Princes Street