Victoria Street

Edinburgh's most photographed street curves downhill from the Royal Mile to the Grassmarket in a rainbow of painted facades that look like they were designed by someone who'd just read a particularly vivid fairy tale. Victoria Street is widely believed to have inspired J.K. Rowling's Diagon Alley — the cobbled, winding street lined with magical shopfronts where young wizards buy their school supplies. Rowling has never officially confirmed this, but she was living in Edinburgh while writing the early Harry Potter books, and the resemblance is hard to ignore.

The street was built between 1829 and 1834, designed by architect Thomas Hamilton as part of a series of improvements to the Old Town. Its purpose was purely practical: creating a better route between the Royal Mile and the much lower Grassmarket. Hamilton's curving design follows the natural contour of the hillside, creating the sweeping arc that makes the street so photogenic. The upper walkway, called Victoria Terrace, runs along the rooftops of the shops below, giving you a bird's-eye view of the street and its surroundings.

The colourful facades that make Victoria Street famous weren't part of the original Victorian plan. They evolved organically as different businesses painted their shopfronts to stand out from their neighbours, creating the patchwork of reds, blues, yellows, and greens that gives the street its storybook character. It's a happy accident of commercial competition.

Independent shops have always defined Victoria Street. Aha Ha Ha — a joke and magic shop — has occupied one of the curved shopfronts for decades, and there are specialist cheese shops, vintage clothing stores, and whisky bars lining both sides. During the Edinburgh Fringe in August, the street becomes a stage for buskers and performers, with the castle looming theatrically above.