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Statue of a man in front of a building with tall windows

William Henry Playfair


Outside the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street sits the Playfair statue. William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) was the visionary architect who helped transform 19th-century Edinburgh, cementing the city as ‘The Athens of the North’.


Playfair’s neoclassical masterpieces, which drew heavily on Greek and Roman architecture, include the National Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy and the University of Edinburgh’s Old College. Playfair’s architectural style was seen as the embodiment of the Enlightenment ideals sweeping Europe as Edinburgh’s New Town was being developed. The carefully planned and coherent schemes of the New Town, together with its cultural associations, have seen it listed alongside the Old Town as a UNESCO World Heritage site.