The old and new towns of edinburgh

The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh was inscribed by UNESCO as a cultural World Heritage Site in 1995 in recognition of the unique character of the Medieval old town and the Georgian planned new town. It covers both the Old and New Towns together with ancient milling settlements on the Water of Leith and the key features include landscape, urban form and architecture, and history and heritage.

The site contains nearly 4,500 buildings more than 75% of which are listed as of special architectural or historic interest, this represents the highest concentration of listed buildings in Scotland. The site also contains many scheduled monuments, the most famous of which is Edinburgh Castle.

Management of the site

The management of The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh is co-ordinated by Edinburgh World Heritage which is jointly sponsored by , Historic Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council. Other key stakeholder organisations include: Edinburgh City Centre Management Company and Scottish Enterprise and Lothians. Edinburgh World Heritage whose main responsibility it is to coordinate the management, protection and enhancement of the site, was established in 1999. It was formed through a merger between the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Committee and The Edinburgh Old Town Renewal Trust.

Further information about Edinburgh Old and New Towns can be found here.

Read the Management Plan here.

World Heritage Committee

The 33rd meeting of the World Heritage Committee took place in Seville between 22 – 30 June 2009. The State of Conservation of the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh was on the agenda. Below is the report on the site written by UNESCO/ICOMOS as well as our own response. The full decision paper will be available from the World Heritage Centre website (whc.unesco.org/) in due course.

UNESCO/ICOMOS report [pdf, 1.1mb]
State Party response [pdf, 890kb]