The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh was the fourth university to be established in Scotland and is one of the most important places of learning in the world.

It was originally founded by Royal Charter in 1583 after Bishop Robert Reid left funds for its building in his will. The construction was also funded by the Town Council, making it one of the 1st civic universities to be built.

The first building was designed by Robert Adam and is now called Old College. It was dedicated to anatomy and the budding science of surgery. It had an underground passage from the lecture hall to the anatomy room and Burke and Hare weren’t the first to smuggle bodies there. Today Old College is a prestigious law school.

By the 19th century, Old College was bursting at the seams and in 1845 Robert Rowand Anderson was commissioned to build a new medical school by expanding a Free Church building on the Mound donated by the newly established Free Church of Scotland. The Mc Ewan Hall was added in 1889. The New College as it was called merged with the Faculty of Divinity in 1935.

In 2002 the different faculties were rearranged into three colleges besides Divinity: The College of Science and Engineering, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. The university owns several other buildings in the city. Both Charles Darwin and Alexander Graham Bell studied at the University of Edinburgh.