Doors Open in Scotland

This September hundreds of hidden architectural gems and exciting new buildings will open their doors to the public for free. David Black gives us a taste of what to expect in the capital.

Edinburgh Doors Open Day, first organised in 1991 by the Cockburn Association (Edinburgh's Civic Trust), has a special significance for the Scottish capital's community of the curious. Each year around 80 buildings which are not normally open to the public or usually charge an entrance fee throw open their doors to the public for free.

In a city noted for its douce reticence a little light is allowed to flood in for a few brief hours. The old lady lifts a discreet hem and shakes an ankle. We learn, perhaps, that she is not quite what we thought she was.

It needn't always lighten the heart, but even the disappointments can be educational.

Thomas Hamilton's elegant temple to Robert Burns is a brilliant townscape ornament but, like his famous Royal High School masterpiece across the road, it is now echoing and empty, and awaits a kinder future.

And what about all those elegant high Victorian churches which seem to have lost much of their 19th century interior gilded opulence beneath layers of 20th century cream paint? As it happens, a surprising amount of opulence survives, from the dazzling glory of the Traquair murals in the Mansfield Traquair Centre to the Tardis-like magnificence of Old St Paul's, accessed through a modest doorway in the shadow of the North Bridge.

Post-modern opulence has even been reconvened in the kaleidoscopic exuberance of the former Highland Tolbooth Church, now the Edinburgh Festival Hub, and often irreverently referred to as ‘Pugin on acid' â€...

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• By : David Black
• In : Events
• Issue : 39
• Page : 26
• Words : 1,383