National Monument of Scotland

[Martyn]

This is probably the first photograph I ever took with the intention of it being a mono image. It was taken on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. I remember looking at this monument and it reminding me of a picture I saw in my childhood of a building of similar construction with tall pillars and dark shadows.

 

[JamesT]

I remember a story, not sure how true, that it was supposed to be a replica of the Parthenon but the money ran out.

[Martyn]

 

From Wikipedia:

The National Monument of Scotland, on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, is Scotland's national memorial to the Scottish soldiers and sailors who died fighting in the Napoleonic Wars.^[1][2] It was intended, according to the inscription, to be "A Memorial of the Past and Incentive to the Future Heroism of the Men of Scotland".^[3]

The monument dominates the top of Calton Hill, just to the east of Princes Street. It was designed during 1823–6 by Charles Robert Cockerell and William Henry Playfair and is modelled upon the Parthenon in Athens. Construction started in 1826 and, due to the lack of funds, was left unfinished in 1829. This circumstance gave rise to various nicknames such as "Scotland's Folly", "Edinburgh's Disgrace",^[4] "the Pride and Poverty of Scotland" and "Edinburgh's Folly"

[CMunzel]

Interesting history of the building. At first viewing, it reminded me of the Parthenon.

[Martyn]

I posted the original picture in this thread on a specialist black & white photography forum. I got some good reviews and it resulted in the sharing of several pictures of the same monument. One of the photographs posted by another member made me sit up and take especial notice; in fact I was convinced it was one of my pictures that someone had stolen, probably from my Flickr site. The angle of view was the same, the people in the photograph were the same people, even the cloud formation was the same. I engaged the poster in conversation asking when the photo was taken, he gave a date and time that was the same as mine. It turned out that he was a regular visitor to Edinburgh, as am I, he always visited in December for the Christmas markets, as do I. After quite a conversation it turned out that we must have been stood almost next to each other with him on my right as we photographed the same image. How's that for a coincidence!

This is the image

 

[CMunzel]

I would have been relieved my image wasn’t stolen.