In a YouTube video uploaded by The Time Travel Artist, viewers are taken right back to 1750 - before the Nor Loch was drained and all that stood of Edinburgh were some humble homes.
Beginning in 2022, we are slowly taken back in time before The Balmoral - which began construction in 1896. The Scott Monument and Waverley Bridge quickly disappear, both built in the 1840s.
This leaves us with a view of Calton Hill in the Georgian Era, where we see the previous North Bridge - which was built between 1763 and 1772. Finally, we’re back in 1750 - before Princes Street Gardens were created, left with an Edinburgh that resembles a small countryside village.
The video, titled The Scott Monument through time, focuses on the Edinburgh landmark that was erected as a tribute to Sir Walter Scott. After his death in 1832, the people of the city felt it fitting to set up a commemoration of the author.
Known for his novels such as Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Bride of Lammermoor, he published his first venture into prose fiction - Waverley, anonymously. Ironically, it is this novel that he is now best known for, with Edinburgh’s main train station now named after it.
Four years after his death, a competition was launched inviting designs for an appropriate memorial. A design submitted by George Meikle Kemp was chosen, and construction began in 1840.
Kemp submitted his plans under the pseudonym John Morvo, who had been the architect behind Melrose Abbey. In actuality, he was a self-taught architect and feared his lack of qualification and reputation would disqualify him.
A statue of Scott was also commissioned, to rest in the centre of the tower's four columns. The monument is currently the second largest of its kind to a writer in the world, after the Jose Marti monument in Havana.
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The structure came at a high cost for several of the stone masons involved, who worked in enclosed sheds. The dust which came from the stone had no escape, and meant the masons were especially vulnerable to phthisis - now known as silici-tuberculosis.
It's thought that around half of the masons died of the disease. When the monument was finally unveiled in 1846, the final cost was over £16,000 - around £600,000 today.
Elsewhere on Princes Street, as we see in the video, the Balmoral Hotel (which was then known as the North British Hotel) began construction the following century. In the late 1800s, the North British Railway built the structure to serve the adjacent Waverley Station.
While under railway ownership, the hotel employed porters who would take passengers directly from their trains into the hotel. Almost a century after it was built, it was purchased by Balmoral International Hotel.
The iconic Balmoral Clock, maintained by James Ritchie & Son, has been set three minutes fast since 1902 to ensure the people of the city wouldn’t miss their trains. The only day this isn’t the case is Hogmanay, to prepare for the bells.
