Regent Terrace

Regent Terrace is a residential street of 34 classical 3-bay townhouses built on the tail of Calton Hill in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. Regent Terrace is within the Edinburgh New and Old Town UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1995.

The name Regent Terrace was used because of the visit to Edinburgh in 1822 of George IV who had been Prince Regent until 1820 during the illness of his father George III. The terrace was designed by the architect William Playfair in 1825 and built between 1826 and 1833. Playfair designed Regent, Royal and Carlton Terraces at the same time as part of an Eastern extension to the New Town that was planned to be even more magnificent than Craig's original New Town. Playfair hoped to attract the “fashionable and wealthy people” to Regent Terrace. The houses are all category A listed buildings.

The houses were built as a terrace on the north side of the street, stepped down at intervals following the slope of the road. Originally, eighteen houses were of two stories and basement (although many have added a full third storey or attic) while the remaining sixteen houses were three stories and basement. The front elevation features continuous cast-iron trellis balconies while each house has a porch with fluted attached Greek Doric columns. The terrace faces Holyrood Park, Arthur's Seat, Holyrood Palace, the Old Town and the Scottish Parliament building. The houses in the terrace are a mixture of tenures — most are privately owned and occupied but some are rented as holiday accommodation. Some of the houses in the terrace have been split into flats.

Number 3 Regent Terrace has been the United States Consulate since 1951. Number 28 was originally the Free French House and was opened by General de Gaulle in 1942. Later it became the French Consulate and then the home of the French consul-general. Number 32 was the home of the Norwegian consul-general until 2008. The Western end of Regent Terrace was closed in 2001 to traffic because of security concerns about the United States Consulate.

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