The phallus to visit the most horrible buildings in Edinburgh

BarcelonaLife is funny. For decades, people didn't want to know anything about those buildings, asking for their demolition. Popularly known, they make crosses.

Many people dream of doing good. From Holyrood to the castle, passing near the modern Parliament designed by Enric Miralles.

The people of Leith aren't from Edinburgh. First of all, they're from Leith, the industrial factory district that connects the city center to the port. A neighborhood of fishermen and workers, many of them with Irish roots. That's why at Easter Road, Hibernian's stadium, you see more Irish flags than Scottish ones. The people who live in the Banana Flats are also Hibernian fans. Hibs. It is the writer Irvine Welsh. And the protagonists of his famous book, TrainspottingMany know the magnificent film, but before that there was the book, which tells the story of the 1980s and 1990s, when people from other neighborhoods didn't want to go near certain areas of Leith because drugs and unemployment had devastated everything.

But Danny Boyle's brilliant film was a revolution. And it introduced everyone to Banana Flats., buildings erected not far from the port. The building itself has its charm: a brutalism that would have moved Le Corbusier. The city council decided in the 1950s to build them thinking it would improve the city, since it could demolish old, dirty streets. But the Banana Flats remained like a mushroom, half disconnected from everything, increasingly poor, destroyed by heroin. That's why the police didn't go in.

One of the characters in Trainspotting, in Sick Boy, lives here. So they shot the film. And the success of the film caused the neighbors to be surprised as more and more tourists came to the apartments listening to the Lust for life Iggy Pop's. At first, they advised them to leave; it wasn't safe. Now, the buildings are protected by the City Council as cultural assets of the city. Who would have thought this when Irvine Welsh, not yet famous, was already analyzing everything that happened in Leith with his sharp eye?

Recommendation for traveling to Edinburgh.

Film: Trainspotting

Author: Danny Boile

Year: 1996