Tracking a Unicorn in Adam Smith's Edinburgh

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Set among crags, hills, and Gothic spires, Edinburgh—also known as “Auld Reekie” or “Old Smokey”—was an unlikely center of progress in the 18th century: congested and smelly, with a sordid underground at the edge of an empire. Yet it was there that Adam Smith first published his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759.

Three decades later, Smith finished the sixth and final edition after having returned to Edinburgh, shortly before his death in 1790, making it both his first and last major work. Since then, the book has served as a grounding for the practice of living well and peacefully with empathy for one another. As Smith wrote, “Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.”

There is nowhere better to get re-acquainted with Smith than Edinburgh. Its past remains visible in the soot-covered buildings of Old Town. Beyond the cobbled wynds and imposing cliffside fortress, the city is now integrated with the surrounding New Town and its many gated private gardens. The place has stunning medieval, Georgian, and Victorian architecture, a rich history, and an evocative art scene. It’s little wonder it was named “Europe’s Leading Cultural City Destination 2024″ by the World Travel Awards.

In Smith’s day, Edinburgh was the epicenter of the Scottish Enlightenment—the vital beating heart of liberal advances in science, medicine, mathematics, literature, legal reform, architecture, and moral philosophy. Scottish novelist, surgeon, and playwright Tobias Smollett described the burgeoning city as a “hot bed of genius.” John Amyatt, the king’s chemist, remarked that “Edinburgh enjoyed a noble privilege not possessed by any other city in Europe….Here stand I, at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh, and can in a few minutes take fifty men of genius by the hand.”

The Royal Unicorn atop the Mercat Cross now overlooks the world’s first major public monument to another unicorn—and the first true liberal, according to Deirdre McCloskey. The Adam Smith Institute led the initiative to honor Smith with a 10-foot bronze statue in the former marketplace in the center of Old Town. The same sculptor who erected that in 2008 also created the David Hume statue just across High Street. Smith’s likeness stands outside St. Giles’ Cathedral, gazing down the road to his final resting place and former home.

Coincident with the recent end of Adam Smith’s tercentenary was the 900-year anniversary of the cathedral and the city. In conjunction with these celebrations, economist Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a collection of essays, Adam Smith’s Guide to Life, Loveliness, and the Modern Economy, arguing compellingly that a “revival of Smithian liberalism would make people’s lives longer, wealthier, and more fulfilling.”

In Smith’s market square you’ll find the Heart of Midlothian—a mosaic near the statue that marks the location of the Old Tolbooth, the city’s first tax office and prison. In its day, locals would spit on the heart when passing or entering the building, a sign of protest and disdain for the executioners and tax collectors. The tradition lives on and is considered an invitation for good luck.

Key Adam Smith sites are centrally located along the Royal Mile, which is comprised of five streets, extending from Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Across High Street from his statue is the former Royal Exchange and Custom House. Smith’s position as a commissioner of customs and salt duties precipitated his return to the city in 1778 and provided an excellent position from which to collect empirical data for his most famous book, The Wealth of Nations.

Halfway down the Royal Mile is Canongate Kirkyard, where Smith is buried. Beyond the church gate, Smith’s unassuming grave is situated along the wall to the left. Abutting Canongate Kirk is Dunbar’s Close Garden. (The term close is found throughout the city and especially in the Old Town, or medieval section. It is another term for wynd or alley, and the pathways it describes are usually both steep and narrow.) Initially a private garden, enjoyed by Smith’s mother Margaret Douglas, Dunbar’s Close Garden was redesigned in the 17th century style and opened to the public in 1977.

Next door, continuing toward the Parliament Building and the Palace, is Panmure House, where Smith lived his last dozen years. Chosen for its convenience to the church, with his mother in mind, this is the only surviving residence of Adam Smith. The house fell into disrepair and narrowly escaped demolition. The property was reopened in tribute to Smith in 2018 after a 10-year, 5.6 million–pound investment, though aside from his works little on display is an original artifact.

Throughout his life, Smith kept an extraordinarily close relationship with his mother, perhaps because his father (and namesake) died five months before he was born. No other woman is known to have captured his heart. ”I am a beau only in my books,” Smith noted. He assembled an impressive library at Panmure with more than 3,000 books, and that is where he finished the last several editions of his signature works.

Smith lost his mother in 1784, when she was 90, six years before he ”died of a decay” at age 67. After her death, he wrote to his publisher William Strahan, “I must say to you, what I have said to other people, that the final separation from a person who certainly loved me more than any other person ever did or ever will love me; and whom I certainly loved and respected more than any other person…is a very heavy stroke upon me.”

Smith was not just a thinker but a taste-maker. A founding member of the Oyster Club, he gathered the Scottish literati every Friday night for conversations that shaped an age of genius and, by natural extension, America’s founding. According to member John Playfair, the club welcomed “strangers who visited Edinburgh from any object connected with art or with science….The conversation was always free, often scientific, but never didactic or disputatious.”

The former tavern where Smith hosted the weekly gatherings (attended by the likes of David Hume and Benjamin Franklin) is located a couple blocks from his statue in Old Town. Hidden for more than a century in the city’s underground in the Grassmarket neighborhood, it was discovered and restored in 2002 by Scottish rugby internationalist Norrie Rowan.

The former distillery on “Whisky Row” is an atmospheric substructure of the vaults under the 18th century South Bridge. The Caves, as it’s now called, has become a wildly popular live music and private event space. The venue’s resurrection is fitting for the former intellectually open community at the heart of the Enlightenment. If you have the opportunity to visit, indulge yourself with a cream crowdie as Smith did.

Adam Smith was born across the Firth of Forth in the village of Kirkcaldy, though the family home and his school are both long gone now. As a young man, he studied in Glasgow and Oxford. But he made his home in Edinburgh. It is a city suited to walking and to hills. It is barely more than a mile from Edinburgh Castle to Arthur’s Seat, the ancient volcano towering over the city, and an easy stroll to Calton Hill, home of the national government.

In Edinburgh, the easy confluence of old and new, the abundance of bookstores and cafés, the immediacy of the port and the sea beyond are atmospheric comfort for a lovely city built on a human scale. It has become a favorite city in the world.

Tourists delight in the medieval castle, the picturesque campus of a world-class university, and the inspiration for many scenes in the Harry Potter books, including the fictitious Diagon Alley. But there is much more to Edinburgh than the kilted street performers and haggis on offer in every pub. The very character and charm of the city calls to mind a line from The Theory of Moral Sentiments: “Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford.”

From architecture to mechanical engineering and from moral philosophy to history, Scotland’s capital city earned the nickname Athens of the North. With an unrivaled tradition of inquiry, the fringes of an empire launched modernity and updated Western Civilization with a decidedly Scottish accent. It was Smith’s home and a place for anyone interested in a rich, varied, and liberal life.

The Adam Smith Walking Tour in Edinburgh

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/07/17/edinburgh-scotland/