Just before he died in 1896 Andrew Usher, a prominent brewery owner, donated £100.000 to the city so that a concert hall, named the Usher Hall in his memory, could be built.

The hall is a mixture of Victorian Gothic and Beaux Arts style and was built by Stockdale Harrison and Howard Thompson. It was opened by Andrew’s widow in 1914 and King George V and Queen Mary laid memorial stones on each side of the entrance on Cambridge Street.

The building was renowned for its innovative curved walls and domed roof. Two figures by Harry Gamley represent Inspiration and Achievement. The three other figures on the exterior of the hall are by Crossland MacClure and symbolise “Music of the Woods”, “Music of the Sea” and the “Soul of Music”.

Inside, the plaster panels are also by Harry Gamley and they depict literary and musical personages: Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott among the literati and Bach, Brahms, Grieg, Handel and Mozart among the musicians.

When it opened, the hall was the favourite venue for classical concerts, with its wonderful acoustics. Today you can still enjoy classical music here, as well as rock, pop, Jazz and Blues concerts. The Freedom of the City ceremonies are held in the hall, which is also used for school concerts and conferences.

If you would like to see a real part of ancient Edinburgh you should go to Heriot Place where you will find one of the only remaining stretches of the Telfer Wall.

The Old Town once had three defensive walls. The first wasn’t very extensive, but it protected the denizens of the area around the High Street. After the Battle of Flodden, the people realised that only part of their town was protected and in 1513 they built the Flodden Wall.

By the 17th century, the wall was showing signs of age, shoddy workmanship and was too small to defend the growing town, so the last fortification was built in 1630 – the Telfer Wall, built to the south of the Flodden Wall.

Unfortunately, today not much of these fortifications remain, and the gateways or ports as they were called, have been knocked down. Parts of the Flodden Wall can be seen in the Royal Scottish Museum, but the Heriot Society managed to preserve one corner tower from the Flodden Wall and a long stretch of the Telfer Wall along Heriot Place.

During excavations at the base of the Wall in 1850, a well preserved bronze Roman coin, dating back to the time of Constantine the Great, was discovered. Further excavations revealed two coffins fashioned out of oak trunks; the exterior of the coffins was rough wood, but the interiors were hollowed out to receive the head and arms of a man and a woman.

Between the coffins, the skull and antlers of an enormous deer were discovered, along with a spearhead made of horn. The burial site is thought to date back to the 3rd century. The remains of the humans disintegrated when attempts were made to remove them from the “coffins”, but the deer’s skull can be seen in the Royal Scottish Museum.

The McEwan Hall has been described as being ostentatious and in bad taste, but you should visit it yourself and make up your own mind about it.

In the eighteen nineties the University of Edinburgh asked the City Council for funds to build a graduation hall, but they were turned down as the Council didn’t think they needed one. William McEwan, the master brewer, stepped in and offered to have a hall built if it bore his name.

The building was designed in the Italian Renaissance style by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. It is a D-shaped structure with a semi-domed roof. The exterior is sober and nothing seems showy about it. The hall was finished in 1897 and duly presented to the University.

The most remarkable feature about the interior is the double helix stairway that leads to the semi-circular galleries. One stairway is climbed from the exterior of the hall; the other is inside the hall. This concept is unique in Scotland.

The reputation of being in bad taste comes from the beautifully elaborate wall panels within the tiered auditorium. These were created by William Palin and they represent the academic disciplines and the Virtues. One panel depicts William McEwan, wearing a smug, “holier-than-thou” expression presenting the hall to Minerva in the Grove of Academe.

William McEwan was given an honorary doctorate in 1898 and some unkind tongues suggested that he built the hall for the sole purpose of “furthering his education without having to get his head out of the ale barrel”.

You really must visit the Parliament House which you will find just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh’s Old Town.

The building was the gathering place for the Pre-Union Scottish Parliament and was built on the orders of King Charles I in 1639. It was used by the Governors of Scotland and also as court rooms and judge’s chambers. Today it houses the Supreme Courts of Scotland.

Parliament Hall is the main hall and the oldest part of the building. It has a magnificent hammer beam ceiling of Scandinavian oak, softly lit by small chandeliers. Part of the Great South Wall is taken up by a huge stained-glass window that throws multi-coloured patterns onto the tile floor.

This central hall is full of paintings and sculptures and you will find statues of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, President of the Court of Session in 1737; Henry Dundus, Viscount Melville, 1st the first Secretary of State for War in 1794; Henry Cockburn the Solicitor General for Scotland in 1830, and Sir Walter Scott the Scottish novelist, famous for Ivanhoe.

While Parliament Hall is open to the public, the court-rooms are not open for casual tours, although you can visit them if you sit in the public gallery during one of the trials in progress.

Our Dynamic Earth is a great place for an instructive, interesting day out for both adults and children. It is located at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, not far from the Scottish Parliament building.

O.D.E. is an earth science museum, which opened in 1999, funded by the Millennium Commission. It is housed in the William Younger Conference Centre, a modern building consisting of a thin steel skin stretched over a steel skeleton, and looking a little bit like a circus big top.

The museum is an educational adventure voyage through time and space, with smells, sound effects, visual displays and interactive workshops. The journey starts in the present, where you see the world as we know it.

Then you step into the “time machine” and you are whisked into space at the time of the Big Bang. You’ll follow the creation of the planets, the forming of Earth and the movement of the tectonic plaques and the glaciers. You’ll learn about the power of volcanoes and earthquakes.

From the beginning of the Earth, you’ll be taken to the evolution of species where there is a section that explains why some species became extinct, why the dinosaurs died and why the mammals survived.

Coming back to the present, you will discover the savannahs and mountains, deserts and tropic rain forests and take a quick trip to the North and South Poles. The visit ends in the Future Dome which shows how the future will be and what you can do in the present to preserve it.

The Scottish Parliament Building has been at the centre of some controversy since it opened. The Scots either love it or hate it, so do go along and visit it to see which side you are on. It is best to take the guided tour, because rooms are open to tour guides that are closed to individual visitors.

It stands on 1.6 hectares in Holyrood Road at the foot of Arthur’s Seat. It consists of a campus of several buildings designed by Euric Miralles, who died before the building was completed.

Miralles’ idea was that his building would represent both the national identity of the people and the land, so it has many aspects that link it to nature, such as the Garden Lobby’s leaf-shaped skylights, which are made of stainless steel with the glass covered by a lattice of oak struts.

The huge windows in the Debating Chamber, Tower Building and Committee Rooms let in natural light and afford wonderful views of Holyrood Park, the Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat. The walls and floors are made from Scottish rock and the furniture is oak and sycamore.

The gardens are open to the public and are full of wildflowers, shrubs and trees. There is a large pool with water features, green lawns, footpaths and bicycle paths.

A visit to Holyrood House on the Royal Mile should be on everyone’s “must” list when they are in Edinburgh it is an important part of Scotland’s history. It is the official residence of the United Kingdom’s monarchs and once the home of Mary, Queen of Scots.

King David I founded the abbey in 1128 and in 1501 the palace was built next to it, but today, only a small part of the original gate house remains. A “palace” was a rather grandiose title for what was a large house, but it was enlarged in 1532 and 1536. It was renovated in 1633, but during Cromwell’s time it was used as barracks for his soldiers and it was badly damaged during a fire.

In the sixteen seventies it was rebuilt by Sir William Bruce and the abbey chapel became the Chapel Royal and it was used until 1768 when the roof fell in. The chapel and the house were restored again in 1822 and once more during the reign of King George V and Queen Mary. They also had indoor bathrooms and loos put in.

The house is open to the public when the “Royals” aren’t in residence; you can admire the delicate stucco-work on the ceilings in the Royal Apartments and look your fill at the portraits of Scotland’s kings, both real and legendary, painted by Jacob de Wet.

The highlight of the visit is the Royal Collection which consists of armour, books, ceramics, clocks, drawings, jewellery, manuscripts, maps, paintings, prints, sculpture, silverware and weapons collected by kings and queens over a period of 500 years and held in trust for the nation by the Crown.

If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the ghost of Agnes Sampson who has haunted the house since 1592 when she was tortured and put to death for witchcraft.

Sadly the Calton Hill Observatory was closed to the public in 2009 after it was considered unsafe due to vandalism and theft of the roofing materials, but it is worth climbing the hill anyway to see this remarkable building.

The idea of putting an observatory on the hill began at the end of the 16th century, when Thomas Short inherited a 12ft reflecting telescope designed by his brother. The building was designed by James Craig and funds were donated by the University of Edinburgh, on the understanding that the observatory would be used by students. . After the Gothic tower on the southwest corner of the site was completed, the money ran out and the land reverted to the city in 1807.

In 1812 the city council donated the land to the Edinburgh Astronomical Institute and the central building, which resembles a Greek temple, was erected in 1818, designed by William Henry Playfair. A 6 inch refractor telescope was installed in the central dome and a 6.4 inch transit telescope was housed in the eastern wing.

The building became the Royal Observatory in 1822, but due to lack of funding it was given back to the government in 1847. In 1888 the site of the Royal Observatory was moved to Blackford Hill and the Calton Hill Observatory was used by the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh for many years before it was abandoned and left vacant.

During its lifetime the site’s main purpose was to measure time. Astronomers used the transit of certain stars through the Meridian to keep the Observatory’s clock accurate for navigation purposes. For many years all ships docking in the port brought their chronometers here to be adjusted.