During this period, the cultural world's collective eyes turn to Edinburgh, and the aesthetic community adopts the city as its temporary world capital. Begun as a series of classical music, opera, dance, and theater performances, the Edinburgh International Festival has grown into one of the world's largest annual festivals of the arts. What's more, the original festival has been joined (and sometimes even bettered) by several other concurrent festivals in Scotland's magnificent capital. For three weeks, there's absolutely no possibility of getting bored in Edinburgh, as an incredibly diverse array of events compete for attention and threaten to overload the senses.

Complementing the Edinburgh International Festival is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (August 6-28), which originated as a lowbrow alternative to the sophisticated original. Anyone willing to pay the nominal registration fee may perform, and currently the Fringe hosts more than 500 performances each day, including theater, dance, poetry, comedy, music, and children's shows. Though the festival has generated controversy in the past (as exemplified by a mid-nineties spat over a feminist, occasionally nude version of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni), it is now generally accepted--and draws far more spectators than the original festival. The legitimization of the Fringe disturbs those with a yen for the daringly avant-garde, and there have been ongoing attempts to set up "ultra-fringe" societies that offer truly alternative art.•