Edinburgh Vaults

Beneath one of Edinburgh's busiest shopping streets lies a hidden city of approximately 120 rooms that were forgotten for over a century. The Edinburgh Vaults were formed within the nineteen arches of South Bridge when it was completed in 1788 as part of the South Bridge Act of 1785. Only one arch — the Cowgate arch — is visible today. The remaining eighteen were enclosed by tenement buildings, creating a subterranean labyrinth of workshops, taverns, and storage spaces that operated in perpetual darkness.

For about thirty years, the vaults hummed with legitimate commerce: cobblers, smelters, and merchants set up shop in rooms ranging from two to forty square metres. But construction had been rushed and the surface was never properly sealed. Water seeped in, the air quality deteriorated, and the businesses fled in the 1820s. What moved in next was considerably less savoury — the destitute poor, illegal whisky distillers, gambling dens, and, according to persistent rumour, body-snatchers who stored corpses overnight. Though there's no hard evidence that Burke and Hare ever used the vaults, the connection has become part of Edinburgh's mythology.

By around 1860, even the poorest residents had abandoned the vaults. They were filled with rubble and forgotten until 1985, when a chance excavation revealed the labyrinthine network of chambers beneath South Bridge. Archaeologists found Georgian-era oyster shells, medicine bottles, broken pottery, and the remnants of lives lived in almost total darkness.

Today the vaults on the north side of the Cowgate arch host some of Edinburgh's most atmospheric ghost tours, while the south side has been converted into event venues called The Caves and The Rowantree — hosting weddings, concerts, and club nights in the same spaces where eighteenth-century craftsmen once hammered shoes by candlelight.