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Medieval and Colonial Capital Cities of <strong>Delhi</strong>COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS• <strong>City</strong> planningThe Old and New Towns of Edinburgh are a remarkable blend of the urban phenomena of organicmedieval growth and 18th‐ and 19th‐century town planning. The successive planned extensions of theNew Town and the high quality of the architecture set standards for Scotland and beyond.Edinburgh's origins as a settlement extend back into prehistory, when its castle rock was fortified, and itmay have served as a royal palace in the early historic period. The settlement that grew up was made aroyal burgh by King David I (who also founded the nearby Abbey of Holyrood) in around 1125. The OldTown grew along the wide main street stretching from the castle on its rock to the medieval abbey androyal palace of Holyrood. The town was walled from the 15th century onwards. lt suffered badly duringthe English invasion of 1544, and most of the earlier buildings date from the rebuilding after this event.However, the later 16th century saw a steady increase in trade; by the early 17th century much of thewealth of the nation had come into the hands of the Edinburgh merchant elite, which resulted inconsiderable new building. The nobility also built town houses, which also contributed to the high qualityof the domestic architecture of this period. From as early as the 16th century building control wasenforced. At the end of the 19th century there had been a withdrawal from the Old Town as a result ofthe growth of the New Town.Work on the New Town began in 1752 with the project of the architects John Adam and James Craig,consisting of a rectangular plan with a residential function and a commercial zone in Prince's Street. In1789, Robert Adam planned the Old College, the University of Edinburgh, which was completed byWilliam Playfair, and extended to an enlarged profile by Sir Rowand Anderson, in 1879. The town wassubsequently expanded to the north, when in 1822 Gillespie Graham harmonized the two contrastinghistoric areas, each with many important buildings, to give the city its unique character.Although the original idea was that the New Town should be a purely residential suburb, it rapidly provedto be attractive to business and government, and it rapidly drew this element of the city away from theOld Town. lt was to become the location for some of the finest public and commercial monuments of theneo‐classical revival in Europe. Monumentssymbolic of Scotland's past were groupedtogether on Calton Hill, in the aspiration tobuild the "Athens of the North."The Old and New Towns together form adramatic reflection of significant changes inEuropean urban planning, from the inwardlooking,defensive, wall medieval city of royalpalaces, abbeys, and organically developedsmall burgage plots in the Old Town, throughthe expansive format Enlightenment planningof the 18th and 19th centuries in the NewTown, to the 19th century rediscovery andrevival of the Old Town with its adaptation ofa distinctive Baronial style of architecture inan urban setting.(Further Research to be done….)DELHI AND BUDAPEST, (Hungary)• Historical BackgroundWithin the unified perspective of an immenseurban panorama the Danube is the dividingline between two cities, which were quiteseparate originally: Buda on the spur on theright bank, and Pest in the plain on the leftMap 06: Map of Budapest showing the nominated boundary,Source: Nomination Dossier7/31/2012 INTACH, <strong>Delhi</strong> Chapter 14

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