The Royal Mile isn't actually a mile. It's roughly a Scots mile, an archaic unit of distance that conveniently stretches a little further than its English equivalent, which seems fitting for a street that has always promised more than you'd expect.

Running from Edinburgh Castle down to Holyrood Palace, it passes through some of the most densely layered history in Europe. The medieval tenements that once lined it grew so tall, up to fourteen storeys, that Edinburgh earned a reputation as one of the world's first vertical cities, its residents tossing waste from upper windows into the closes below.

VoiceMap's tours follow the Mile as a kind of confessional, tracing body-snatching routes through the closes, the double life of Deacon Brodie (cabinet-maker by day, burglar by night), and the witchcraft trials that ended in the castle's shadow. The Stevenson and Harry Potter tours find literary Edinburgh hiding in the same streets.