Advocate's Close
High Street, The High Street, Edinburgh, EH1, United Kingdom
Of the ninety-odd closes that survive along the Royal Mile, Advocate's Close offers perhaps the most perfect Edinburgh moment: a narrow medieval lane plunging steeply from the High Street, framing the Scott Monument and the New Town rooftops at its base like a painting.
Calton Hill
Calton Hill, Holyrood, Edinburgh, EH7 5AA, United Kingdom
Edinburgh's most embarrassing monument sits on this hill, and the city has spent nearly two centuries trying to decide whether to be proud of it or pretend it doesn't exist.
Camera Obscura & World of Illusions
Castlehill, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 2ND, United Kingdom
Scotland's oldest purpose-built visitor attraction has been bending light and bending minds since 1835, when entrepreneur Maria Theresa Short set up her optical show on Calton Hill.
Canongate Kirk
153 Canongate, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH8 8BN, United Kingdom
Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is buried in a modest grave in this kirkyard, and for most of the twentieth century almost nobody noticed.
Cramond Island
Almond, Edinburgh, EH4, United Kingdom
Twice a day, the sea parts and you can walk to an island.
Dean Village
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Five minutes' walk from the West End's Georgian crescents, the ground drops away into a steep wooded gorge and you're standing in a twelfth-century milling village that feels like it belongs in the Cotswolds, not the capital of Scotland.
Edinburgh Castle
Castlehill, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 2NG, United Kingdom
There's a tiny chapel hiding inside one of Europe's most besieged fortresses, and it's been standing since around 1130 — making it the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Vaults
South Bridge, The Grassmarket, Edinburgh, EH1 1LL, United Kingdom
Beneath one of Edinburgh's busiest shopping streets lies a hidden city of approximately 120 rooms that were forgotten for over a century.
George Heriot's School
Lauriston Place, Portsburgh, Edinburgh, EH3 9EQ, United Kingdom
From the back windows of the Elephant House cafe, J.
Grassmarket
Grassmarket, The Grassmarket, Edinburgh, EH1 2HS, United Kingdom
From 1660 until 1784, this sunny square in the shadow of the castle was Edinburgh's principal killing ground.
Greyfriars Kirk & Kirkyard
Greyfriars Place, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
A Skye Terrier named Bobby sat on his master's grave here for fourteen years, from 1858 until his own death in 1872, becoming the most famous dog in Scottish history.
Holyrood Abbey
Canongate, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH8, United Kingdom
These roofless Gothic arches, open to the sky and the Edinburgh rain, are what remains of one of Scotland's most important medieval monasteries.
National Museum of Scotland
Chambers Street, Portsburgh, Edinburgh, EH1, United Kingdom
Dolly the Sheep stands in a glass case on the first floor, looking remarkably calm for an animal who changed the course of biological science.
Palace of Holyroodhouse
Canongate, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH8, United Kingdom
On the night of 9 March 1566, Mary Queen of Scots was having supper in a tiny room off her bedchamber when a group of armed nobles burst in, dragged her Italian secretary David Rizzio from behind her skirts, and stabbed him fifty-six times.
Portobello Beach
60 Promenade, Portobello/Craigmillar Ward, Edinburgh, EH15 2BS, United Kingdom
Edinburgh has a beach, and it was named after a battle in Panama.
Princes Street Gardens
Princes Street, Princes Street, Edinburgh, EH1, United Kingdom
Edinburgh's most beautiful park sits on top of a lake of corpses.
Rosslyn Chapel
Chapel Loan, Midlothian West, Roslin, EH25, United Kingdom
Dan Brown made this chapel world-famous in 'The Da Vinci Code,' but the real Rosslyn is stranger than any conspiracy theory.
Royal Mile
The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
This street isn't actually a mile long — it's a mile and 107 yards, which happens to be exactly one Scots mile, a measurement that hasn't been used since the eighteenth century.
St Giles' Cathedral
High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1RE
In 1637, a market trader named Jenny Geddes supposedly hurled a wooden stool at the minister's head when he tried to read from the new Anglican prayer book that Charles I was forcing on the Scottish Kirk.
Surgeons' Hall Museums
Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DW
There's a pocket notebook bound in the skin of a serial killer on display here, and it's one of the less unsettling items in the collection.
The Meadows
Melville Drive, Edinburgh EH9 1ND
Like Princes Street Gardens to the north, the Meadows was once a loch.
The Real Mary King's Close
2 Warriston's Close, High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1PG
Beneath the Royal Mile, a seventeenth-century street is frozen in time.
The Writers' Museum
Lady Stair's Close, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh EH1 2PA
Tucked down a narrow close off the Lawnmarket, a seventeenth-century townhouse holds one of literature's strangest collections: a plaster cast of Robert Burns's skull, Sir Walter Scott's rocking horse, and the ring a Samoan chief gave Robert Louis Stevenson.
Explore history in Edinburgh
GPS-guided narration at every landmark. Tap a spot on the map, hear the story. Every fact verified.