Pleasance (street)

The Pleasance is a street just outside the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland, located in the Southside area. A remnant of the Flodden Wall flanks the west side of the street between Drummond Street and the Cowgate.

The University of Edinburgh owns a complex of buildings on the street known as The Pleasance which, for nine months of the year, operate as one of the four Student Union venues that serve the Edinburgh University Students' Association. In August, the complex is converted to use as one of the major venues of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, for which it is most publicly well-known.

The street runs in a predominantly north–south direction for about 600 m (1⁄3 mile), from the junction of Cowgate, St Mary's Street, and Holyrood Road to the junction with East Crosscauseway, where it becomes St Leonards Street. The first section rises quite steeply, from 190 to 250 feet (58 to 76 m), then is relatively flat south of East Adam Street Historically, the street was one of the main routes into Edinburgh from the south, meeting St Mary's Wynd (now St Mary's Street) at St Mary's Wynd Port, one of the gateways of the town walls.

The name Pleasance derives from the Scots plesance, meaning a park or garden. It first appears in 1507 as the name of a nearby house, and was later transferred to the street and then the suburb which was part of the regality of the Canongate. The derivation of the name from a nunnery of St Mary of Placentia, often mentioned in histories of Edinburgh, is an invention by William Maitland in his 1753 History of Edinburgh.