Edinburgh

_1_ Edinburgh is a jewel in Scotland's crown. This jewel has many facets: classical architecture

piled on hills and tree-filled valleys, medieval closes and sudden views of the sea from street corners. And the castle which looks so right that it might have grown out of the rock by some natural process. Edinburgh has several thousand buildings that are officially protected because of their architectural or historic importance - more than any other city outside London.

Edinburgh is one of the longest continuously inhabited places in Northern Europe; there is archeological evidence of human habitation there in the Bronze Age, about 1, 000 BC. It's a public reminder to Scots of their roots..'

_2_ The Royal Mile leads from the Castle to Holyrood Palace which is another official residence of the Queen besides Buckingham Palace. The Palace is a museum itself, and it contains a number of museums. Among them are the Museum of Childhood with its unique collection of toys and games; the Writers' Museum, a treasure house of items relating to Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, and the People's Story Museum which tells the story of ordinary people of Edinburgh from the 18th century to the present day. If you ever go to Edinburgh, don't miss other important sights: the Royal Museum of Scotland, St. Giles's Cathedral, the National Gallery of Scotland and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

_3_ The city of Edinburgh has always been a great educational centre; it has three universities now. It boasts of such world famous scientists as the mathematician John Napier who invented logarithms and the decimal point, Adam Smith, the father of political economy, David Hume, a well-known philosopher and historian, Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone and James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest physicists in the world.

_4_ Much of Edinburgh's charm is in the way in which past and present live easily side by side. But if you look only at the sights, you may overlook the fact that Edinburgh is also a busy modern city where more than 440, 000 people live and work. About one fifth of the working popula­tion are employed in manufacturing industry: electrical and electronics engineering, paper printing and publishing, food and drink industry. Others work in a variety of service industries, especially financing services. Edinburgh's importance as a financial centre is second only to that of London.

The capital of Scotland is now the seat of the Scottish Parliament which has gathered there after a long break of about 300 years.