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Situated at the eastern end of Princes Street, Calton hill marks the edge of the original New Town development. From the top of the hill there are some fantastic views across the New Town all the way to the Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and beyond to Arthur's Seat. But aside from the views, Calton Hill has several well-known landmarks ranging from the poignant Burns Memorial to the bizarre National Monument. Other tourist sites on the hill include the Nelson Monument and the popular City Observatory.
Calton Hill is also the venue for the annual Beltane Festival which takes place on April 30th/May 1st each year. A celebration of spring and fertility it is essentially a May Day celebration with a modern twist.
One of Edinburgh's more gruesome, and infamous, past events involves the dubious characters of William Burke and William Hare. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Edinburgh was renowned for its pioneering medical research, particularly in the field of human anatomy. However, in order to study human anatomy you of course need human bodies…. This led to the grisly trade of "body snatching" whereby grave robbers would take bodies from fresh graves, selling them for medical research. The lasting legacy of the trade is the numerous watchtowers which were hastily put up in Edinburgh's churchyards, some of which can still be seen today - for example in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The body-snatching trade was encouraged by the "turn-a-blind-eye" attitude of the hospitals. But it was taken to its extreme by the notorious Burke and Hare, who killed at least 16 people in order to sell the bodies to medical researcher Robert Knox. The duo were eventually captured and tried for murder and, reputation tarnished, Knox's medical career was ruined - and Edinburgh is still remembered for the gruesome events. The part of Edinburgh where the pair's terrible crimes were committed is the Grassmarket area of the Old Town.
Aside from its Castle, Edinburgh is most famous for its annual International Festival. The festival was first held in 1947 as a celebration of the end of the Second World War, and over the years it has grown into the biggest arts festival in the world. Each year it attracts around a million visitors to Edinburgh, thus almost doubling the city's population. The festival is essentially made up of several mini-festivals, the main one being the International Festival which features slick performances of music, dance and drama. But there is also the extremely popular Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the famous Fringe Festival, and the smaller Book, Film and Jazz festivals.
The main Festival was founded in order to "provide the world with a centre where, year after year, all that is best in music, drama and the visual arts can be seen and heard". As a result the shows that make up this part of the Festival tend to be sophisticated, intellectual and fairly mainstream, and so this part of the festival is most popular with "culture vultures".