St Bernard's Well is a circular temple with a statue of Hygeia, the goddess of health, built in 1789. The sulphurous spring within was discovered by schoolboys from George Heriot's School in 1760, and became hugely popular during the late-18th-century fad for 'taking the waters' – one visitor compared the taste to 'the washings of foul gun barrels'.
St Bernard's Well
Edinburgh
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
0.61 MILES
Edinburgh Castle has played a pivotal role in Scottish history, both as a royal residence – King Malcolm Canmore (r 1058–93) and Queen Margaret first made…
7.19 MILES
Many years may have passed since Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and the subsequent film came out, but floods of visitors still descend on Scotland's…
2.24 MILES
Built on Clydeside, the former Royal Yacht Britannia was the British Royal Family's floating holiday home during their foreign travels from the time of…
24.69 MILES
One of Scotland's great country houses, Traquair House has a powerful, ethereal beauty, and exploring it is like time travel. Odd, sloping floors and a…
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
0.71 MILES
Edinburgh's gallery of modern art is split between two impressive neoclassical buildings surrounded by landscaped grounds some 500m west of Dean Village…
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1.45 MILES
The Scottish Parliament Building, on the site of a former brewery and designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles (1955–2000), was opened by the Queen in…
0.68 MILES
Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden is the second-oldest institution of its kind in Britain (after Oxford), and one of the most respected in the world…
24.63 MILES
Completed in 2002, the Falkirk Wheel is a modern engineering marvel, a rotating boat lift that raises vessels 115ft from the Forth & Clyde Canal to the…
Nearby Edinburgh attractions
0.2 MILES
Designed by Thomas Telford and built between 1829 and 1832 to allow the New Town to expand to the northwest, the Dean Bridge vaults gracefully over the…
0.24 MILES
The National Trust for Scotland's Georgian House has been beautifully restored and furnished to show how Edinburgh's wealthy elite lived at the end of the…
0.24 MILES
The centrepiece of the grand Georgian facade on the north side of Charlotte Sq, No 6 is the official residence of the first minister of Scotland.
0.29 MILES
At the western end of George St is Charlotte Sq, the architectural jewel of the New Town, which was designed by Robert Adam shortly before his death in…
0.3 MILES
Set in the valley that runs beneath the Dean Bridge ('dene' is a Scots word for valley), Dean Village was founded as a milling community by the canons of…
0.42 MILES
The western end of Princes St is dominated by the tower of St John's Church; the church is worth visiting for its fine Gothic Revival interior.
7. St Cuthbert's Parish Church
0.47 MILES
St Cuthbert's Parish Church was built in the 1890s on a site of great antiquity – there has been a church here since at least the 12th century, and…
0.48 MILES
These beautiful gardens lie in a valley that was once occupied by the Nor’ Loch (North Loch), a boggy depression that was drained in the early 19th…