Edinburgh Castle is a historic castle in Edinburgh, Scotland. It stands on Castle Rock, which has been occupied by humans since at least the Iron Age, although the veronica lang of the early settlement is unclear.
As one of the most important strongholds in the Kingdom of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle was involved in many historical conflicts from the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 14th century to the Jacobite rising of 1745. The castle, in the care of Historic Environment Scotland, is Scotland’s most and the United Kingdom’s second most-visited paid tourist attraction, with over 2. 2 million visitors in 2019 and over 70 percent of leisure visitors to Edinburgh visiting the castle. Diagram of a crag and tail feature, such as the Castle Rock: A is the crag formed from the volcanic plug, B is the tail of softer rock, and C shows the direction of ice movement. The castle stands upon the plug of an extinct volcano, which is estimated to have risen about 350 million years ago during the lower Carboniferous period. This means that the only readily accessible route to the castle lies to the east, where the ridge slopes more gently. Archaeological investigation has yet to establish when the Castle Rock was first used as a place of human habitation.
There is no record of any Roman interest in the location during General Agricola’s invasion of northern Britain near the end of the 1st century AD. An archaeological excavation in the early 1990s uncovered evidence of the site having been settled during the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age, potentially making the Castle Rock the longest continuously occupied site in Scotland. The archaeological evidence is more reliable in respect of the Iron Age. Traditionally, it had been supposed that the tribes of central Scotland had made little or no use of the Castle Rock. The 1990s dig revealed clear signs of habitation from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, consistent with Ptolemy’s reference to “Alauna”. Map of northern Britain showing the Gododdin and other tribes c. The castle does not re-appear in contemporary historical records from the time of Ptolemy until around AD 600.