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St Giles Cathedral, High Street. The central tower with its late C15 spire is (after the Castle) the best known object in the skyline of the Old Town. ... The upper stage and crown spire were of one build, its date unfortunately unrecorded (... possibly 1486).

In each face three closely spaced, obtusely pointed lancets with cusped heads. The crown is in essence a big pinnacle carried on eight flying buttresses springing from the corners and the centres of the sides - an idea almost certainly derived from the spire of St Nicholas, Newcastle (c.1474) ... Despite the English origin of the idea, its realization here has the ruggedness and compact outline characteristic of Scottish Late Gothic. Deep buttresses with many set-offs and stubby pinnacles start from corbels below the parapet and so exceed the width of the tower itself. Parapet of pierced quatrefoils with a cresting of upturned half-quatrefoils. ...  Above the meeting of the flyers ... Mylne's chunky Carolean Gothic takes over (mid-17th century). ... 

John Knox's House, High Street. (The connection with Knox is disputed but the legend ensured the preservation of the house). Improbably picturesque but largely genuine C16, projects S to stop the view down High Street. ... The garlanded coat of arms flanked by the initials IM and MA (for James Mosman and Mariota Arres) provides a fairly firm date for this last part of the C16 work: between 1556 when Mariota Arres inherited and 1573 when her husband James Mosman was executed for treason. ... The first-floor window of the W front is a remarkable example of Scottish C16 classicism. Doric-pilastered with small urn finials flanking a blind round panel, and is flanked by tiny garlands. At the NW corner of the splay, a sundial under a carved relief of Moses pointing to the sun hidden in a cloud inscribed ΘΕΟΣ DEUS GOD . ...
To the left of John Knox's House is Moubray House. The front of c.1630, rubble-built ... with a plain C19 shop on the ground floor and an early C19 corniced doorpiece at the head of the forestair. ...

Stretch of the Canongate between New Street and the old Canongate Tolbooth at the bottom. These tenements were largely restored or rebuilt in the 1950-60s, retaining the traditional facades.

Canongate Tolbooth. The building has served various purposes through the ages: Collecting tolls from travellers through Canongate burgh, council chamber, police court, prison.  The tower was built in 1591, the courtroom block to the E at the same time or soon after. This is Canongate's expression of burghal pride, so the tower above its vaulted pend to Tolbooth Wynd has conical-roofed bartizans at the front with qautrefoil gunloops, and a conical spire rising from flattened broaches. ... A large clock, dated 1884, sticks out over the street on scrolled wrought-iron brackets. Forestair and lean-to stair-turret in the angle of the courtroom block, which is quite domestic but has a rectangular oriel at the E end, partly balancing the tower. In the centre of the block, a large pedimented frame ... In this frame the Burgh arms. They are late C19, as is a good deal of the rest of the courthouse block, which acquired its appearance in Robert Morham's restoration of 1875. He provided a new roof of steeper pitch, and a parapet, and replaced three piended dormers with four steeply pedimented ones ...  

No. 200 Canongate is a replica of 1956-7 by Gordon & Dey of a harled early C17 front, with gabled dormer heads on the second floor and a row of gabled dormers at the attic. The central arch leads to Old Playhouse Close, the location of the first permanent theatre in Edinburgh between 1747 and 1769. Commemorated by the plaque at the entrance.
Huntly House, which houses the museum of Edinburgh. The name is misleading - it was never a great town house ... By 1517 there were three small houses side by side. They were united in 1570 ... Rubble ground floor, corbelled-out ashlar first floor. (About 1671) the tenement was raised by two timber-framed and harled storeys with three broad gables to the street, jettied out above the eaves line of the existing building. ...
Through the pend on the left one enters into Bakehouse Close, showing the rear of the building.

Canongate Kirk. Opened in 1691 as the new parish church of the burgh of Canongate. More here.
Robert Fergusson strolling past the kirk. He is buried in the kirkyard - more here.
Panmure House in Panmure Close off the Canongate. The house is late 17th century, L-plan with crowstepped gables.  Adam Smith lived here and is buried in Canongate kirkyard - more here.

White Horse Close at the bottom of the Canongate. The Close was the arrival and departure point for the London stage. The name comes from the horse that carried Mary Queen of Scots to and from Holyrood Palace nearby. In Sir Walter Scott's first novel, Waverley, The White Horse Inn was the lodgings of Bonnie Prince Charlie's officers when they entered Edinburgh in 1745. 
Of the current buildings, the Pevsner guide states  ... so blatantly fake that it can be acquitted of any intention to deceive. A court built for Laurence Ord in the late C17, its buildings focused on the inn at the N end (first picture), was bought in 1889 by Dr Barbour and his sister, and reconstructed by James Jerdan as working-class housing , then even more extensively by Frank Mears & Partners in 1962. The W side is now a very plain row of harled two-storey houses, the E side is very self-consciously picturesque (second picture), the N end a Hollywood dream of the C17. Even the datestone of 1623 joins in the fantasy; it used to read 1523 but was recut c.1930 to give a more plausible date. The advantages of harling as a cover-up for modern brickwork are nowhere better displayed. It is actually an amazing reproduction when one compares it with this Painting of 1845.

Queensberry House, at the bottom end of the Canongate, built 1681-6. Single-storey rusticated porch between the two wings added c.1700. It has now been incorporated into the new Scottish Parliament building as shown here. For more on the parliament building see separate page.

Abbey Strand, the last, short bit of the Royal Mile, leading up to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Two buildings only. The harled four-storey W one, restored by Thomas Ross in 1916, began as a late C15 or early C16 tenement of three storeys and attic with two two-room dwellings on each floor. Each half had its own forestair to the first floor ... and a corbelled-our stair-turret to the floors above. After the sack of Edinburgh in 1544 the building was reconstructed and extended N by 3.3 m, the turret stairs were removed, and a new stair-tower serving the whole structure was put up at the back. ...
To the E ... an early-C17 L-shaped two-storey addition with three unequal crowstepped gables to the front. The present ground floor with a large pend arch on the r. ... is due to H.M. Office of Works, 1935.