Will tourism pay to revitalise Princes Street?

Multi-million pound masterplan sets out proposals for a new, people-friendly future for famous thoroughfare

Sir Walter Scott’s monument: Pic by John Drummond

The view up to Edinburgh Castle and its rock from Princes Street is one of those iconic vistas, photographed by many of the millions of visitors to Scotland’s Capital every year, writes Sarah McArthur.

“Mine own romantic town” as Sir Walter Scott described his Edinburgh home in the epic poem Marmion. Now, the author credited with inventing modern Scotland’s tourist industry peers out over Princes Street from the shelter of the world’s largest monument to a writer.

And the famous street he stands guard over may enjoy a new lease of life funded, at least in part, by the same visitor economy his novels and poems inspired two centuries ago, with residents and visitors enjoying picnic spots, green spaces, new wider sandstone pavements, trees, and increased room for people to enjoy comfortable new benches on which to rest.