Friday 9th August 

After months of preparations and training, staff at the Market Street Hotel, in the heart of the Edinburgh World Heritage site will today be welcoming their very first guests.

Designed by jmarchitects, the 98 bed hotel offers a unique opportunity for visitors to stay in a building designed to nestle sympathetically into its historic surroundings whilst also showcasing many dramatic and contrasting vistas across the city. 

The hotel is intended to be non-invasive and respectful of the neighbouring buildings and townscape, it utilises the inherent geometries, materials and proportions of its context in a design which is at the same time unapologetically of its own time and culture. 

The north and west elevations of the hotel are clad with the traditional materials of sandstone and whinstone with the courtyard elevation to the south adopting white brick; as is common in the old town, to bring light down into the courtyard garden below. 

A top floor champagne lounge sits below a folded roofscape of dark whinstone and zinc and is set back from the front of the building creating a roof terrace which enjoys panoramic views across the Waverley Valley and the New Town from North Berwick Law in East Lothian to Edinburgh Castle itself. The hotel rooms themselves offer unique and varied outlooks, across rooftops to spires and stone gables, into hidden courtyards and out across the city to the distant Firth of Forth.

The building was designed to meet the exact requirements of European hotel operator ‘The Carlton Hotel Collection’ and the jmarchitects team worked in close collaboration with Dutch interior design team FG Stijl and interior architects Leask.