Edinburgh: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Old Edinburgh was built on one narrow ridge between the castle and the palace, walled in, with nowhere to spread. So it built upwards: eleven-storey tenements in the seventeenth century, the tallest in Europe, with the gentry on the middle floors and the poor at the top and the bottom. Two hours, mostly up or down.
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A short history of Edinburgh
A fortress stood on a volcanic rock above the city as early as the early Middle Ages, and at the edge of the old town, along the "Royal Mile", the kings of Scotland lived in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. In 1767 James Craig won the competition to design the New Town, with its straight Georgian streets. At that time Edinburgh was the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment, the city of David Hume and Adam Smith. In 1947 the Edinburgh Festival was held for the first time, and in 1995 the Old and New Towns were declared a World Heritage Site. In 1999 the Scottish Parliament began sitting here again, after almost three hundred years.
The ten best sights in Edinburgh
1Edinburgh CastleBesieged twenty-six times — the most attacked place in Britain
2Royal MileCastle to palace, and it is a Scots mile, slightly longer
3Palace of HolyroodhouseMary Queen of Scots watched her secretary stabbed here
4Scottish ParliamentFree, ten times over budget, and architecturally hated and loved
5St Giles CathedralA woman threw a stool at the preacher here in 1637
6Greyfriars KirkyardRowling took names off these stones. Tom Riddle is one
7Mary King’s CloseA whole street sealed under the city in 1753, and still there
8National Museum of ScotlandFree. Dolly the sheep is stuffed and on the fourth floor
9Scottish National GalleryFree, small, and the Vermeer is worth the walk alone
10National Portrait GalleryFree, red sandstone, and a frieze of every Scot who mattered
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Edinburgh →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Edinburgh:
Free walking tours in Edinburgh
The Old Town
Old Edinburgh was built on one narrow ridge between the castle and the palace, walled in, with nowhere to spread. So it built upwards: eleven-storey tenements in the seventeenth century, the tallest in Europe, with the gentry on the middle floors and the poor at the top and the bottom. Two hours, mostly up or down.
- Edinburgh Castle · Besieged twenty-six times in eleven hundred years, which makes it the most attacked place in Britain. The oldest building in it is a chapel from about 1130, and the one o’clock gun has been fired every day since 1861 so ships in the firth could set their clocks.
- Royal Mile · It is a Scots mile, which is about two hundred metres longer than an English one, and the narrow alleys running off it are called closes because each was closed with a gate at night. There are over eighty of them.
- St Giles Cathedral · In 1637 a market trader named Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the preacher for reading an English prayer book. The riot that followed turned into a war that reached England and ended with a king executed.
- Mary King’s Close · The city built its new exchange on top of a whole street in 1753, simply sealing the lower floors in. The street is still down there — rooms, doorways and fireplaces — under the floor of the city chambers.
- Greyfriars Kirkyard · The iron cages over some graves are mortsafes, put there in the 1820s to stop body snatchers selling corpses to the medical school. Burke and Hare skipped the digging and murdered sixteen people instead.
- Grassmarket · Public hangings were held here until 1784, and the spot is marked in the cobbles. One woman, Maggie Dickson, was hanged, put in a coffin, and woke up on the road home — under Scots law she had served her sentence and could not be hanged twice.
The New Town
In 1766 Edinburgh held an architectural competition for a new town, and a twenty-six-year-old called James Craig won it. His plan is a perfect geometric grid laid out across the drained loch — the exact opposite of the crush on the other side of the bridge. It is the largest complete Georgian quarter in the world. Two hours, all flat.
- Princes Street Gardens · This was the Nor Loch, an artificial lake the city made in 1460 as a defence and then used as a sewer for three hundred years. It was drained in 1820, and the smell is said to have been the main argument for the New Town.
- Scottish National Gallery · Free, and small enough to see properly in an hour. It holds one of the few Vermeers outside the Netherlands, and every January the Turner watercolours are shown — but only in January, because daylight in Scotland is weak enough then not to fade them.
- New Town · Craig laid the streets out as a loyal message: George Street for the king, Queen Street for his wife, Princes Street for his sons, and Thistle and Rose Streets between them for Scotland and England. The whole plan is an argument for the union.
- National Portrait Gallery · Free, paid for entirely by one newspaper owner in 1889 because the state would not. The frieze running round the great hall shows a hundred and fifty-five Scots in order of birth, from Saint Ninian to Thomas Carlyle.
- Dean Village · Eleven water mills ground the city’s grain here for eight hundred years, and the millstones are still set into the walls. It is five minutes’ walk from the busiest street in Scotland and you will hear the river instead of traffic.
- Stockbridge · The rows of low houses here were built by a workers’ cooperative in the 1860s, and each street is named after one of the trades that built it — the masons, the slaters, the glassmakers. People still live in them.
The Volcano and the Shore
Edinburgh sits on a dead volcano. The rock the castle stands on is the lava plug, and the ridge behind it was carved by a glacier moving west to east — which is why the city is long and narrow in exactly that direction. And on the crags beyond, in 1788, James Hutton worked out that the earth was millions of years old and not six thousand. Two and a half hours.
- Palace of Holyroodhouse · In March 1566 Mary Queen of Scots, six months pregnant, was held at gunpoint in her supper room while her husband’s men stabbed her secretary Rizzio fifty-six times. The room is open, and a brass plate marks the spot.
- Scottish Parliament · Scotland had no parliament of its own for two hundred and ninety-two years, from 1707 to 1999. The building cost ten times its budget, both architects died before it opened, and the shapes on the facade are upturned boats from the coast.
- Salisbury Crags · At a spot on this cliff James Hutton showed in 1788 that molten rock had pushed up through older layers — which only made sense if the earth was unimaginably old. Modern geology starts on this rock face, and it is a ten-minute walk.
- Arthur’s Seat · Two hundred and fifty metres of extinct volcano inside the city, and forty-five minutes to the top. In 1836 five boys hunting rabbits found seventeen tiny coffins in a cave on its side, each with a carved figure in it. Nobody has ever explained them.
- Leith · A separate town with its own council until 1920, when it was merged into Edinburgh against its will — a referendum went five to one against and the government did it anyway. It has not entirely forgiven that.
- Royal Yacht Britannia · Forty-four years and a million nautical miles, and the queen is said to have cried in public exactly once — when it was decommissioned in 1997. Her bedroom is a single bed, and it is kept exactly as she left it.
Getting to Edinburgh and getting around
- Edinburgh Airport · The tram runs to Princes Street in 35 minutes, £7.50
- Waverley · The only station in the world named after a novel
- Haymarket · Nearer the west end, and the trains stop here too
Cheap eats in Edinburgh
Eight counters where Edinburgh eats and drinks standing. A hog roast sold out of a window by lunchtime, a bar from 1859 with no music and no television, and an inn that claims 1360 and has a skittle alley in the back that Queen Victoria is said to have played on.
- Oink · £6, standing, and it closes when the pig is gone
- The Bow Bar · Standing room only after six, and that is the point
- Sandy Bell’s · Free, every night, and the session starts at nine
- The Sheep Heid Inn · Claims 1360, and the skittle alley behind is from 1882
- Mary’s Milk Bar · Gelato made that morning, and the flavours change daily
- Union of Genius · Six soups a day, a tiny room, and bread included
- Café Royal · An 1863 oyster bar with tiled portraits of inventors
- Stockbridge Market · Sunday only, and lunch from a stall is under £8
Museums in Edinburgh
- National Museum of Scotland · Free, and the roof terrace is free as well
- Scottish National Gallery · Free. The Turners come out in January and only then
- National Portrait Gallery · Free, and one newspaper owner paid for the whole building
- Modern Art Gallery · Free, two buildings facing each other across the road
- Surgeons’ Hall Museums · £10, and it is not for everybody
- Writers’ Museum · Free, down a close, and three writers in one house
- Royal Yacht Britannia · £20, in Leith, and the tea room is on the deck
Parks and gardens in Edinburgh
- Arthur’s Seat · Free, 45 minutes up, and the wind is real
- Calton Hill · Free, ten minutes up, and go at sunset
- Royal Botanic Garden · Free since 1670, and the glasshouses cost £8
- Water of Leith · Twenty kilometres of path, and you can walk to the sea
- Portobello Beach · A Victorian promenade, and people swim in October
- Blackford Hill · The view back at the whole city, and no tourists on it
Things to do in Edinburgh with kids
- Edinburgh Zoo · £23, and the penguin parade is at half past two
- Dynamic Earth · Under the crags where geology was invented. £19.50
- Camera Obscura · The live rooftop camera is from 1853 and still works
- National Museum of Scotland · Free, and whole floors are built to be touched
- Portobello Beach · Sand, an amusement arcade, and a bus from the centre
- Greyfriars Bobby · A dog that sat on a grave for fourteen years, they say
Live music in Edinburgh
- Usher Hall · A brewer paid for it in 1914 on condition it stay cheap
- Queen’s Hall · A church from 1823, and the pews are still the seats
- Summerhall · Tickets from £10, and the bar is in the dissection room
- The Stand Comedy Club · A basement, every night, and Sunday lunchtime is free
- Traverse Theatre · New writing only, and it has been that way since 1963
- Sandy Bell’s · Free traditional music every night of the year
Nightlife in Edinburgh
- Grassmarket · The pubs look straight up at the castle, and it costs nothing
- Cowgate · Under the bridges, and the cheapest night in the city
- The Bow Bar · Three hundred whiskies and nobody shouting
- The Shore, Leith · Old dockside pubs, and Michelin stars on the same street
- The Dome · A former bank, and in December it is lit beyond reason
- Café Royal · 1863, oysters at the bar, and the tiles are listed
Frequently asked questions about Edinburgh
What is there to see in Edinburgh?
The top sights in Edinburgh are Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile and Palace of Holyroodhouse. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Edinburgh?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Edinburgh without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Edinburgh?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Edinburgh, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Old Town.
How do you get to Edinburgh and get around?
The main ways are Edinburgh Airport, Waverley and Haymarket. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Edinburgh, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Edinburgh that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Edinburgh for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.