Royal Welcomes in Edinburgh New Town: Portraying Civic Identity in 1822 and 1842

The visits to Edinburgh by King George IV in 1822, and by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1842, were part of carefully planned tours of Scotland to make themselves known to – and to familiarise themselves with – the northern part of their dominion and its inhabitants. Royal welcomes of this kind were common occurrences in the early modern period, and led the ruler through the main public spaces of the royal burgh – now known as the Old Town. However, during the nineteenth century it was the New Town that was chosen as the setting for the ceremonies welcoming the monarch, with the Old Town marginalised to a side role. I argue that the choice of this new spatial setting celebrated a changing perception of Edinburgh’s identity and role within a pan-British and post-Enlightenment context. The urban spaces selected for and involved in this celebration of renovated civic pride were not bland and interchangeable containers for rituals, but rather essential performers themselves, reinforcing and expressing three-dimensionally the political narrative supporting the event