Old College, The University of Edinburgh

The Old College of the University of Edinburgh stands out for its massive quadrangle and the heavy, bronze-colored dome topping the entrance gate. It occupies the site of the old Kirk o' Field, where Mary Queen of Scots stayed before her husband, Lord Darnley, was murdered in a mysterious explosion in fifteen sixty-seven. Construction of this new building began in seventeen eighty-nine, but it dragged on for decades until the architect William Henry Playfair finally finished the grand design in the mid-nineteenth century.