South Edinburgh

Walk across the Meadows and watch Edinburgh’s southside at play. The spacious parkland accommodates games of shinty and hurling (both team sports played with sticks and a ball), cricket and Australian Rules football, often simultaneously as accents from Galway, Lochaber, Brisbane and London merge. Fringe Sunday takes over the Meadows for a day in August, when you can go to see Fringe Festival acts for free.

Marchmont borders the Meadows and is popular with students attracted by its proximity to Edinburgh and Ediunburgh Napier universities. To the west lie the areas of Bruntsfield and Morningside, elegant neighbourhoods of substantial, Victorian tenements and seductive, independent shops.

See a show at the Church Hill Theatre, the main venue for the city’s flourishing, amateur theatrical scene or watch a film at the Dominion Cinema, an Art Deco treasure cherished by the local community. The residential areas of Polwarth and Merchiston are popular with Edinburgh’s writers, with Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling and Alexander McCall-Smith all residing here.

The University of Edinburgh is an enduring presence in the Newington and St Leonard’s areas of the city, and the surrounding shops and bars reflect the optimism and eccentricity of student life.