Grassmarket

From 1660 until 1784, this sunny square in the shadow of the castle was Edinburgh's principal killing ground. Over a hundred people were executed here in the 1680s alone, many of them Covenanters who refused to accept the king's authority over their church. A small rose garden and memorial stone near the eastern end marks where the gallows stood. The last person hanged here was James Andrews in 1784, after which the city moved its executions to a less public location — not out of mercy, but because the crowds were getting unmanageable.

The most extraordinary execution story belongs to Margaret Dickson, known as "Half-Hangit Maggie." Hanged in 1724 at the age of 22 for concealing a stillborn pregnancy, she woke up in the carriage taking her body to burial and went on to live a long life. Under Scots law, she couldn't be tried again for the same crime — her death sentence had, technically, been carried out. She reportedly remarried her husband, though the church debated whether she was still legally the same person.

The Porteous Riots of 1736 made the Grassmarket internationally infamous. Captain John Porteous of the Town Guard ordered his men to fire into a crowd watching an execution, killing several people. He was sentenced to death, then reprieved by London. The mob broke into the Tolbooth prison, dragged Porteous to the Grassmarket, and lynched him from a dyer's pole. The government never identified anyone responsible — the city's wall of silence was absolute.

Today the Grassmarket is one of Edinburgh's liveliest drinking and dining spots, its dark past mostly obscured by pub terraces and Instagram-ready views of the castle. The market itself dates to 1477, when it served as the city's primary livestock market, and the name has stuck for over five hundred years.