Edinburgh Photo Library
- National War Memorial

National War Memorial

After the holocaust of the First World War, a former barracks in Edinburgh Castle was converted into a National Shrine to those who had lost their lives. The dead of the Second World War and other conflicts since 1945 are also commemorated.

The exterior of the building has been embellished with symbolic sculpture - a mailed figure representing courage, a female with doves representing peace, a blinfolded Justice, a warrior child and a phoenix denoting the survival of the spirit.

Inside is the Hall of Honour and the Shrine itself - an apse with stained-glass windows and a steel casket containing the complete Roll of Honour of the Scottish war dead.

H V Morton in his book "In Search of Scotland" written in the 1920s, described the National War Memorial as "the most beautiful War Shrine in the world" - and the only cathedral built in Scotland since the Reformation.

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