Although the capital boasts one of Scotland's loftiest buildings, the 90-metre-high St Mary's Cathedral, it was once home to a structure that was significantly taller.
In the 19th century, Edinburgh was branded Auld Reekie on account of its abundance of pollutant-spewing chimney stalks, but there was one that was taller than all the rest: the New Street gasworks chimney.
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At a tremendous 100-metres-tall, the great lum dwarfed the Nelson Monument atop Calton Hill as the tallest freestanding structure to ever exist in the city centre.
Easily visible from the Fife coast, the chimney towered over nearby Waverley Station to an extent that has never been surpassed.
The chimney belonged to the New Street gasworks which opened in 1818 and occupied a vast stretch of the Waverley valley's eastern extent between the Canongate and Calton Road.
Its height was a necessity due to its location in the city centre. The taller the chimney, the less the populace would be exposed to the plumes of smoke emanating from it.
Designed by Sir James Gowans in 1845, the chimney, which was one of the tallest in Scotland after the St Rollox chimney in Glasgow, quickly became a magnet for controversy.
Writing to the editor of The Scotsman newspaper in 1846, one angry Edinburgh local questioned how the city authorities could ever greenlight a structure that was almost double the height of the then newly-built Scott Monument (61 metres).
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They wrote: “In my opinion, one of the most striking circumstances observable in beholding Edinburgh from any point of view, is the almost total absence of long chimneys, and certainly the effect is greatly heightened by that circumstance.
“Fancy a tall, dingy-looking chimney with a top like the one at St Rollox, Glasgow, thrusting up its ugly head immediately behind the finest view of the Scott Monument."
While it was not everyone's cup of tea, the chimney endured for almost 60 years, before finally being toppled at the turn of the 20th century.
The New Street gasworks closed in the 1930s and was replaced by a bus garage that has also since been demolished.
Removal of the bus depot in 2006 uncovered the remains of the old gasworks on the site, which is today being reimagined as the Caltongate development.
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