Hills in Edinburgh

Salisbury Crags, with Arthur's Seat behind

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is traditionally said to have been "built on Seven Hills", in an allusion to the seven hills of Rome. While there is considerable room for debate as to which hills are included and excluded from the seven, seven possibilities are listed in an old rhyme:[1][poem 1]

The Pentland Hills are also just to the south of the city, and their lower slopes are within the city boundary, especially around Hillend, Swanston and Balerno. Some of the hills are formed from dead volcanoes that last erupted 400 million years ago,[2] and all show the effect of glaciation.

The tale of the seven hills of Edinburgh is popular enough that several local business take their name from it, including a dentist,[3] a tour company,[4] and a cèilidh band.[5]

  1. ^ Malinowski, Gościwit (June 2017). "Septimontium (Seven Hills) as conditio sine qua non for a City to Pretend to be a Capital" (PDF). Horizons: Seoul Journal of Humanities. 8 (1). Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University: 3–26.[dead link]
  2. ^ Irshad, Wahid; Goh, Keng; Kubie, Jorge (September 2009). "Wind resource assessment in the Edinburgh region". 2009 World Non-Grid-Connected Wind Power and Energy Conference. Nanjing, China: IEEE. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1109/WNWEC.2009.5335836. ISBN 978-1-4244-4702-2. S2CID 24929016.
  3. ^ "Seven Hills Dental Practice". sevenhillsdental.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  4. ^ "Seven Hills Tours". 7hillstours.co.uk. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  5. ^ "Seven Hills Ceildh Band". 7hillsceilidh.com. Retrieved 29 December 2019.


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