Edinburgh Castle

There's a tiny chapel hiding inside one of Europe's most besieged fortresses, and it's been standing since around 1130 — making it the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh. St Margaret's Chapel is so small that only twenty people can squeeze inside, yet it outlasted every assault, fire, and bombardment that reduced the rest of the castle to rubble over nine centuries. Robert the Bruce captured the castle in 1314 and ordered every building destroyed except this one, reportedly because of his reverence for Queen Margaret's story. It was later used as a gunpowder store for two centuries before anyone realised what it actually was.

The castle sits on an extinct volcanic plug that's been fortified since at least the Iron Age, and it has been besieged twenty-six times in its documented history — making it one of the most attacked places in Great Britain. The Honours of Scotland, the oldest crown jewels in Britain, were hidden here during Cromwell's invasion. They were bricked up inside a wall and forgotten for over a century until Sir Walter Scott tracked them down in 1818 and pried open the sealed chest. The Stone of Destiny, on which Scottish kings were crowned for centuries, sits alongside them after being returned from Westminster Abbey in 1996.

Every day except Sunday, a 105mm field gun fires from the castle ramparts at precisely one o'clock. The tradition dates to 1861, when the blast served as a time signal for ships in the Firth of Forth. It was synchronised with a time ball dropping on Nelson's Monument on Calton Hill — the ball for the eyes, the gun for the ears. The gun has only been fired in anger once, in 1916, when German Zeppelins bombed Edinburgh during World War I. The shells missed.

From the Esplanade, the views stretch from Arthur's Seat to the Pentland Hills and across the Forth to Fife. In August, this open space becomes the grandstand for the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which has been performed here every year since 1950 to audiences of over 200,000.