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

A partnership involving Historic Scotland, City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh World Heritage is responsible for managing the World Heritage Site. Other key stakeholder organisations include: Edinburgh City Centre Management Company and Scottish Enterprise and Lothians.

Along with Edinburgh World Heritage and the City of Edinburgh Council, work is ongoing on developing a new Management Plan for the site. The draft Plan has now been consulted upon and the final document is due to be published in the summer of 2011. The draft and information on how to respond can be found here.

Read the current Management Plan here.

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


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 initial report on the site written by UNESCO/ICOMOS following the 2008 Mission, as well as our own response. The final Report of Decisions paper from the 2009 World Heritage Committee meeting in Seville can also be found here.

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

As part of their final decision, the World Heritage Committee requested that a State of Conservation Report be submitted to the World Heritage Centre by 1st February 2011. The Report was to take into account the recommendations of the joint UNESCO/ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission to the property, progress with the review of the Management Plan and establishment of a buffer zone, for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 35th session in 2011 in Bahrain.

The Report was submitted by the UK State Party on 1st February 2011 and can be found here, or by visiting the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s World Heritage website.


The World Heritage Committee has asked that Statements of Outstanding Universal Value are developed for all World Heritage Sites by 2012. These statements define the elements within a Site which make it important and which must be protected in order to maintain its significance. Strict guidelines govern the development of these Statements, which can only include the justification for Outstanding Universal Value that was accepted by the World Heritage Committee and for which the site was originally inscribed.

The Statement of Outstanding Universal Value for Edinburgh has been developed by the management partners following advice from ICOMOS-UK and was consulted upon as part of the revision of the Management Plan.

The draft statement was submitted to UNESCO on 1st February 2011 and will now be reviewed by UNESCO’s advisory bodies. You can view all the draft Statements submitted to UNESCO from the UK, including Edinburgh’s, here. Alternatively you can visit the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s World Heritage website.

The Statement will only be finalised once it has been agreed by the World Heritage Committee at their meeting in the summer of 2012.