Edinburgh is the site of Scotland's new parliament, a powerhouse of innovation, an arts mecca, and a seat of ancient ritual. Gully Wells celebrates a city no longer in thrall to those people south of the border

The first time I went to Scotland, I was about sixteen and took the overnight train from King's Cross station in London to Edinburgh. It may not have been the Orient-Express, but it still had plenty of class. The dining car had white linen tablecloths almost as crisp as the sheets on my bed, and I was awakened at six in the morning by a uniformed waiter knocking at the door with a breakfast tray of Darjeeling tea served in a china teapot that shook, rattled, and rolled as the train lurched through the hazy, rainy Scottish dawn. I suppose it must have been this silly, sentimental memory that made me decide to approach Edinburgh the old-fashioned way—instead of flying, as any sane person would.

Well, times have changed and so have trains. And usually not for the better. I discovered that the dining car had become a kind of down-market pub on wheels, and this time in the sleeping car, I was awakened by a large lady who banged loudly on the door and handed me a paper cup of instant coffee.

The one thing that remained faithful to memory was the weather: It was cats-and-dogs time, with buckets of heavy Scottish rain pouring down the back of my neck as I got out of the cab outside The Scotsman (as in hotel). The formerly grim granite headquarters of Scotland's leading newspaper had been transformed. The grand marble staircase with its stained glass windows, where once only the most senior of the senior staff had been allowed to tread, now led down to a spa. The main hall had been turned into a breezy brasserie, and the editor's private reception room, with its carved mahogany fireplace, was open to anybody who wanted to wander in and warm himself or herself in front of the glowing coal fire. Which is exactly what I did. I picked up a copy of The Scotsman, ordered some real coffee, and started to speed-read my way into the psyche of the city.

"Architect Tearfully Defends His Team" was the headline, leading me to what was the major scandal of the day. Money, power, death, corruption, lies. No sex, just architecture: In London I'd read a column by an ex-editor of The Scotsman, Magnus Linklater, about the new Scottish Parliament building, which he described as "a splendid architectural concept that had turned into a financial nightmare." The major features of the project, already more than three years behind schedule and $700 million over budget, still included a gigantic crane, acres of scaffolding, and, of course, mud. I was due there in about half an hour.

For the first time since 1707's Act of Union, which had made Scotland part of the United Kingdom, the Scots were to have their own parliament, sealing the independence they had won in 1998. None of the huge, empty, dusty old buildings in Edinburgh seemed up to such a role, so Enric Miralles, a brilliant (and sadly now deceased) Catalan architect was called in to create something radically new in the canon of political architecture—and a building that might just do for Edinburgh what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim did for Bilbao. In a city whose last great architectural moment took place about two hundred years ago, when the New Town was created, and where some famous buildings date back to the twelfth century, Miralles delivered a knockout punch of late-twentieth-century design. Using local stone and wood, he created a series of interconnected structures that looked like the hulls of upside-down boats, and he cleverly incorporated the distinctive crows-feet steps of Edinburgh roofs into the design of the members' offices.