The Scott Monument is a Victorian Gothic monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. It stands in
Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, opposite the Jenners department store on Princes Street and
near to Waverley Station. The tower is 200.5 feet or 61.1 metres tall, and the small viewing deck
near the top — which gives a panoramic view of central Edinburgh and its surroundings — is reached
by a narrow spiral staircase with 287 steps.

Following Scott's death in 1832, a competition was held to design a monument to him. An unlikely
entrant went under the pseudonym "John Morvo", the name of the medieval architect of Melrose Abbey.
Morvo was in fact George Meikle Kemp, forty-five year old joiner, draftsman, and self-taught
architect. Kemp had feared his lack of architectural qualifications and reputation would disqualify
him, but his design (which was similar to an unsuccessful one he had earlier submitted for the
design of Glasgow Cathedral) was popular with the competition's judges, and in 1838 Kemp was awarded
the contract to construct the monument. On 6th of March 1844, Kemp on a foggy night, fell into a
canal and drowned. The monument was finished on 15th August the same year.