Dugald Stewart Monument, Edinburgh

This circular monument commemorates Dugald Stewart, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher who lived from 1753 to 1828. It stands on Calton Hill overlooking Edinburgh, and William Henry Playfair designed it. Notice the nine fluted Corinthian columns arranged around the raised urn: Playfair drew on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, giving this memorial the character of a small ancient Greek temple.

Stewart held the University of Edinburgh’s moral philosophy chair from 1786 until his death in 1828, making him a major academic figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Royal Society of Edinburgh commissioned the monument and chose its site in 1830; it was finished in September 1831. Its compact form turns a philosopher’s memorial into a carefully framed architectural object above the city.