Royal Terrace, Edinburgh

Royal Terrace is a grand street in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the north side of Calton Hill within the New Town and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1995, built on the south side of a setted street, facing the sloping banks of London Road Gardens, formerly Royal Terrace Gardens, with views looking north towards Leith and the Firth of Forth.

William Henry Playfair designed Royal Terrace between 1820 and 1824. Together with the adjoining Carlton and Regent Terraces, the three streets are in a continuous line, cut only by Carlton Terrace Lane giving access to mews, leading around the eastern end of Calton Hill and surrounding Regent Gardens, the largest of the private gardens of the New Town. These streets, with Royal Terrace the grandest, were the showpiece of Playfair's conception for the Eastern New Town, intended to be grander than James Craig's original development.. The streets were named in connection with the visit to Edinburgh in 1822 of George IV. The extension was projected to reach from Calton Hill down towards Leith, although ultimately very little of the northern section was ever built..

Royal Terrace is in the form of an extended, 121-bay 'palace front' of classical 3-bay (and one 4-bay) townhouses Playfair's original drawings are held by Edinburgh University, including plans for the whole facade as well as individual sections. The houses are now all category A listed buildings.

The design of the townhouses is unlike those in neighbouring streets. Door entrances and windows on the ground floor are arched and surrounded by V-chamfered rusticated stone work. Ten of the houses still have their original fanlights. The upper floors throughout are of polished ashlar stone with basements of droved ashlar. The houses are of two or three storeys with attics to the colonnaded sections.

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