Grand tour: The best of the Edinburgh Art Festival on foot

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The best place to start your walking tour is at Waverley train station (1), named after Walter Scott’s novel, and adorned with aphorisms from the writer who put Scottish culture back on the map.

The Fruitmarket Gallery (2) is right beside the station, and this summer it is staging an atmospheric multi-media show, Woman with a Red Hat, by enigmatic artist Tacita Dean.

Cross Market Street to the City Art Centre (3), Edinburgh Council’s handsome gallery, to see In Focus: Scottish Photography. This fascinating survey spans over 150 years of photography in Scotland, from Hill & Adamson’s portraits of Newhaven fisherwomen, back in the 1840s, until today.

Martin Creed’s Work No. 1059, commissioned by The Fruitmarket Gallery in 2010 as part of Creed’s solo exhibition Down Over Up / Photos by Gautier de Blonde

After The Scotsman moved out, this splendid stairwell became rundown, a haven for rough sleepers and street drinkers, so in 2010 the Fruitmarket Gallery decided to smarten it up a bit.

It commissioned Scottish artist Martin Creed to make an artwork here, and he clad its 104 steps in marble - each one a different hue. The effect is magical, but supremely practical. As he said himself, Creed wanted to make something both functional and beautiful, something folk might not even notice as they went about their day.

• Video: Martin Creed turns Scotsman Steps into artwork

Turn right along North Bridge, head straight on over South Bridge, and turn right again into Chambers Street, site of the National Museum of Scotland (5). This vast museum covers everything from archaeology to natural history, and its contribution to the Art Festival is a beguiling show called Art of Glass.

These contemporary pieces by 15 artists will make you think about glass in a new way, as something powerful and sculptural rather than merely ornamental.

Continue along Chambers Street, and turn right onto George IV Bridge. Turn right again when you reach the High Street, and walk down the Royal Mile, past St Giles Cathedral, into Canongate.

Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018 / Photograph by Peter Packer

Ahead of you, opposite the Scottish Parliament, is Holyrood Palace, home of Scotland’s monarchs since the 16th Century and now the official Scottish residence of The Queen.

The adjacent Queen’s Gallery (6) presents exhibitions from the Royal Collection, and this summer’s treat is Canaletto & The Art of Venice. As you’d expect, there are some sublime pictures of La Serenissima - and the story of how they came into the Royal Collection is an intriguing backdrop to this show.

Canaletto’s agent was Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice, who sold his vast collection of books and paintings (including numerous Canalettos) to her great-great-great-great grandfather, George III for £20,000.

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Map data © Google Maps 2018

Start your day at Saint Cuthbert’s Church (1), on the corner of Lothian Road and Princes Street - the oldest Christian site in Edinburgh, founded by St Cuthbert himself. Hidden in a subterranean graveyard, the church is richly decorated, including a Tiffany stained glass window and a relief of Leonardo’s Last Supper – and the latest addition is Bill Viola’s Three Women.

Viola is a video artist, but his timeless films are more like Renaissance paintings. There’s nothing specifically Christian about this silent instillation, or even anything overtly religious, but it feels perfectly at home here, as if it’s always been here - an intensely spiritual piece for a profoundly spiritual place.

Walk through Princes Street Gardens to the Scottish National Gallery (2), where Rembrandt – Britain’s Discovery of the Master sheds fresh light on one of the greatest artists of all time.

Remarkably, it was British collectors who established Rembrandt’s posthumous reputation. This lavish exhibition explains how it happened, illustrated by some wonderful works of art.

Cross over Princes Street and walk up Hanover Street, through the heart of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. Turn right along Queen Street, and you’ll reach the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (3), a flamboyant neogothic building that’s an artwork in its own right. The permanent collection is first rate, and their standout show this summer is Beyond Likeness, a stunning retrospective of the compassionate, perceptive portraits of Victoria Crowe.

Crowe has painted the great and the good, from RD Laing to Tam Dalyell, but two of her most moving portraits are of her son Ben, who died of cancer, aged just 22. ‘The most important portraits to me are the ones of people who have enriched my own thinking or awareness,’ she explains.

An equally affecting subject was her friend and neighbour, Jenny Armstrong, a shepherdess. ‘She had always been used to hard work, and few creature comforts,’ observes Crowe, with acute empathy, ‘but she had a fundamental and natural sense of her past within the greater whole.’

Continue along Queen Street, into York Place, and turn left down Leith Walk. On your left, in Union Street, is Edinburgh Printmakers (4) - an old steamie (communal laundry) where people can learn and practice all kinds of printmaking. Anyone is welcome to come in and have a go.

There’s a gallery upstairs, and this summer’s show is a series of delicate landscape photos by artist and environmentalist Ravi Agarwal. Visiting this place will inspire you to discover (or rediscover) the inner artist you used to know.

A few blocks west is Ingleby (5), one of Scotland’s leading commercial galleries. Founded in 1998, after inhabiting various buildings around Edinburgh this year it moved into this old nonconformist meeting house. Austere yet oddly intimate, it’s an amazing space for modern art.

This summer’s show, Jacob’s Ladder, celebrates man’s relationship with space, but just as many visitors will travel here to marvel at this discreet triumph of renovation.