Edinburgh Castle

Castle Rock has been occupied since at least the Iron Age, and there has been a royal castle on it since the reign of Malcolm III in the eleventh century. It stopped being a royal residence in 1633 and by then was mainly a garrison. Over its history it has served as arsenal, treasury, national archive, mint, prison and fortress, and it holds the Honours of Scotland. Research in 2014 counted twenty-six sieges across eleven hundred years, which gives it a fair claim to being the most besieged place in Great Britain and one of the most attacked anywhere.