On your left, look for the big soot-dark stone arch spanning the street between tall gray buildings, with a pair of classical columns and a little “gateway” sitting right on top of the curve.
This is Regent Bridge, and yes… it’s a bridge that kind of hides in plain sight, like Edinburgh saying, “Oh this old thing?” What you’re looking at is a 19th-century fix for a very real problem: getting into the city on the main London road used to be a headache. The approach from the south squeezed travelers through cramped medieval streets-great if you loved bottlenecks, less great if you were trying to sell Edinburgh as a polished, elegant capital.
So in the 1810s, the city decided to modernize with a bold move: carve a grand entrance from Calton Hill toward Princes Street by vaulting over a deep dip called Low Calton. Down in that hollow had been a tangle of older, poorly built streets… and the plan was basically to erase them and start fresh. Urban renewal, 1814 style.
The push came from Sir John Marjoribanks, Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, who also wanted better access to a new jail planned for Calton Hill-nothing says “welcome to the city” like smoother traffic to the prison. He brought the proposal to city leaders in March 1814, with engineer Robert Stevenson backing it up. The estimate was about £20,000 at the time-roughly around £1.5 to £2 million today, give or take… and of course the reality got bigger once they started buying property and reshaping the area.
Making this happen wasn’t tidy: part of the old Calton burial ground had to be moved, a valley about fifty feet deep needed bridging, solid rock got blasted, and buildings at the east end of Princes Street had to come down. Construction began in 1816 and wrapped in 1819, with Archibald Elliot designing the roadway above-Waterloo Place-named because it was laid out in the year of Waterloo.
Now, take in the engineering swagger: a huge semicircular arch about fifty feet wide, with extra “reverse arches” supporting the roadway on each side. And those Corinthian columns? That’s the Greek Revival fashion of the day-Edinburgh dressing its infrastructure like a triumphal monument. The bridge officially opened on August 18, 1819, during a visit by Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Nothing like royal foot traffic to christen a brand-new shortcut.
When you’re set, St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh (Catholic) is a 6-minute walk heading north.
