The Palace of Holyroodhouse sits at the foot of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, hemmed in by the ancient volcanic crags of Arthur's Seat, and it has been accumulating extraordinary stories for nearly nine centuries. Its name comes from a vision: in 1128, King David I saw a stag bearing a glowing cross between its antlers and interpreted this, reasonably enough, as a sign to build an abbey. The palace grew up around that abbey over the following centuries.

Mary Queen of Scots spent much of her turbulent adult life here, marrying two of her three husbands on the grounds and witnessing the murder of her secretary, David Rizzio, in her own apartments. It was also here, in 1563, that her parliament passed the Scottish Witchcraft Act, a law grimly more severe than anything England would produce.

VoiceMap's audio tours use Holyrood as a starting point for some of Edinburgh's darkest chapters: tracing how James VI's obsession with witchcraft led to mass trials and executions, and following Mary's reign through the intrigues, romances and violence that defined it.