Edinburgh

Edinburgh is Scotland’s capital, built on hills and old volcanoes above the Firth of Forth. The castle stands on its rock at the top of the Old Town, a ridge of tall stone tenements and steep closes running down the Royal Mile to a royal palace; across the valley, the Georgian New Town is all straight streets and squares. The two together are a World Heritage Site, and almost everything worth seeing is a walk away, with Arthur’s Seat rising wild in the middle of the city.

This guide covers when to go, where to stay, what to see, a walk along the Water of Leith, a day by the Forth bridges, what to eat and drink, and the history, festivals and customs that make the city make sense.

1. 01

   Edinburgh Castle

   Built on the plug of an extinct volcano, the castle has guarded the city since at least the 12th century. Inside are St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building in Edinburgh; the Honours of Scotland, the oldest crown jewels in the British Isles, in a new display since 2026; the Great Hall; and the small room where Mary, Queen of Scots, gave birth to the future James VI.

   Book a timed ticket online: once they sell out, none are sold at the gate. The One O’Clock Gun is fired every day except Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day.

   Photo: John Lord, CC BY-SA 2.0
2. 02

   The Royal Mile and St. Giles’ Cathedral

   The Royal Mile runs down the spine of the Old Town from the castle to Holyroodhouse, lined with tall stone tenements and cut by closes, narrow lanes that drop steeply away on either side. Halfway down stands St. Giles’, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, with its 15th-century crown spire. John Knox preached here from 1559, and the carved Thistle Chapel was added in 1911.

   St. Giles’ is free to enter. In Parliament Square beside it, parking space 23 marks roughly where Knox was buried in 1572.

   Photo: Bjdream, CC BY-SA 4.0
3. 03

   The Palace of Holyroodhouse

   The King’s official residence in Scotland, at the foot of the Royal Mile. The tour runs through the state apartments to the rooms of Mary, Queen of Scots, in the old tower, where her secretary David Rizzio was murdered in 1566, and ends in the roofless nave of Holyrood Abbey, founded by David I in 1128.

   Open Thursday to Monday outside summer, and closed when the King is in residence, usually for a week around the start of July.

   Photo: Daniel Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0
4. 04

   The National Museum of Scotland

   Free, on Chambers Street: Scotland from its oldest rocks to Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, with the Lewis chessmen, carved from walrus ivory in the 12th century, and a Victorian Grand Gallery of white iron under a glass roof.

   Take the lift to the roof terrace for a free view over the Old Town to the castle.

   Photo: Elshad, CC BY-SA 4.0
5. 05

   Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park

   An extinct volcano some 340 million years old rises 251 meters over the city, the heart of a wild park of crags, lochs and grassland a few minutes from the Royal Mile. The climb from the palace takes about 45 minutes, past the Salisbury Crags, where the geologist James Hutton found proof that molten rock had forced its way through older layers.

   Wear shoes with grip: the summit is rocky, windy and slippery after rain.

   Photo: David Monniaux, CC BY-SA 3.0
6. 06

   Calton Hill

   A short climb from the east end of Princes Street, with the classic view back along it to the castle and the Old Town. On top stand the Nelson Monument, the City Observatory, now a contemporary art space, and the National Monument, twelve columns modeled on the Parthenon, begun in 1826 and abandoned in 1829 when the money ran out.

   Come at sunset, or on 30 April for the Beltane Fire Festival.

   Photo: Saffron Blaze, CC BY 3.0
7. 07

   Princes Street Gardens and the Scott Monument

   The gardens fill the valley below the castle, where the Nor Loch, the Old Town’s foul lake, was drained from the 1760s as the New Town rose. At their eastern end the Scott Monument, a Gothic spire 61 meters high, honors the novelist Walter Scott, and the Scottish National Gallery stands on the Mound between the two halves.

   Climb the monument’s 287 steps for the view (a small fee). In the West Gardens, the Ross Fountain frames the castle.

   Photo: Chris Morgan, CC BY-SA 2.0
8. 08

   The Royal Yacht Britannia

   The royal family’s yacht from 1954 to 1997, now moored at Ocean Terminal in Leith: the bridge, the state apartments where presidents were entertained, the Queen’s bedroom and a gleaming engine room, with tea served on the royal deck.

   Take the tram to the Ocean Terminal stop and allow about two hours.

   Photo: Andrew Abbott, CC BY-SA 2.0

Three hidden gems

Pick the neighborhood first, then the hotel. Each link opens a map of places to stay around it.

Hotel links go to Stay22. If you book, we may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

Scottish cooking starts with what the land and the cold sea give: beef, lamb, game, salmon and shellfish, oats and root vegetables. Edinburgh adds a lively restaurant scene, from the waterfront in Leith to the pubs of the Old Town. Lunch runs from about noon and dinner from 7pm.

Haggis, neeps and tatties

Sheep’s heart, liver and lungs minced with oatmeal, onion and spices, served with mashed swede and potato. It is the centerpiece of Burns Night on 25 January, and on pub menus all year.

Photo: Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Cullen skink

A thick soup of smoked haddock, potato and onion in milk, named after the fishing village of Cullen on the Moray coast.

Photo: Metukkalihis, CC BY-SA 3.0

Scottish breakfast

Bacon, eggs and sausages with the local additions: square Lorne sausage, black pudding, tattie scones and often haggis.

Photo: Copowell472, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fish supper

Fish and chips, which in Edinburgh come with salt and sauce, brown sauce thinned with vinegar, rather than salt and vinegar.

Scotch pie

A small round pie of spiced minced mutton or beef in a firm pastry case, sold in bakeries and at football grounds.

Cranachan

Raspberries folded into whipped cream with honey, a splash of whisky and toasted oatmeal, a summer dessert.

Shortbread

Butter, sugar and flour, baked pale and crumbly in fingers or in round petticoat tails cut into wedges.

Photo: Peter Craven, CC BY 2.0

Eat seafood along the Shore in Leith, cafés and the Sunday market in Stockbridge, and haggis with a pint in the Old Town’s pubs. The Grassmarket and Victoria Street are lively at night, and Nicolson Street and the Southside are the best value.

Robert Burns

1759 to 1796

Burns rode into Edinburgh in November 1786, an Ayrshire farmer whose first book of poems had just made him famous, and spent the winter as the talk of the city’s drawing rooms. The Edinburgh edition of his poems came out in April 1787, with Alexander Nasmyth’s portrait engraved at the front. At a gathering in Sciennes that winter, a boy of fifteen named Walter Scott watched him and never forgot it.

Walter Scott

1771 to 1832

Born in the Old Town and trained as a lawyer, Scott made Scotland’s past famous across Europe, first in verse and then in Waverley (1814) and the novels that followed it, published without his name. The Heart of Midlothian (1818) takes its title from the old Tolbooth prison on the Royal Mile. Waverley station is named after his novels, and his monument towers over Princes Street.

Robert Louis Stevenson

1850 to 1894

Stevenson grew up at 17 Heriot Row in the New Town and spent his student years in the taverns of the Old Town. His family owned a cabinet made by Deacon Brodie, the respectable craftsman who burgled houses by night and was hanged in 1788, and that double life fed Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). The same year, Kidnapped sent young David Balfour to the Hawes Inn at Queensferry, where he is tricked aboard a ship.

Muriel Spark

1918 to 2006

Born in Bruntsfield and schooled at James Gillespie’s, Spark drew on one of her teachers there, Christina Kay, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), the story of an Edinburgh schoolmistress in the 1930s and the girls she chooses as her set.

There watching high the least alarms,

Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar;

Like some bold vet’ran, gray in arms,

And mark’d with many a seamy scar:

The pond’rous wall and massy bar,

Grim-rising o’er the rugged rock,

Have oft withstood assailing war,

And oft repell’d th’ invader’s shock.

Robert Burns, Address to Edinburgh (1787), from The Poetical Works of Robert Burns (1887)