Edinburgh city, the capital of Scotland is set in an idyllic world heritage site, offering oodles of historical sites dating back from the bronze age. With a population of almost 500,000 Edinburgh is the second largest city in Scotland and a top UK tourist hot spot with 1 million overseas visitors attending the Fringe independent performing arts and comedy festival in August alone, making the city well known as the European cultural hub for performing arts venues. The city is also infamous for its authors including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- The author of Sherlock Holmes, Louis Stevenson,creator of treasure island and the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and in more recent years JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, wrote her first book in an Edinburgh coffee shop.