A History of Edinburgh’s Old Town and its Characters

Edinburgh’s Old Town is home to centuries of Scottish history, where you’ll find traces of the remarkable characters that shaped the city in its cobbled streets and hidden closes.

On this two-hour walking tour, you’ll hear stories that bring Edinburgh’s medieval past to life. There’s the infamous body-snatchers Burke and Hare, and the loyal terrier Greyfriars Bobby who captured the nation’s heart.

Starting at the National Museum of Scotland, you’ll wind through the atmospheric wynds and closes that branch off the Royal Mile, the Old Town’s main thoroughfare. You’ll descend into the Cowgate, where Highland and Irish migrants once crowded into disease-ridden slums. You’ll explore the cathedral precinct, where you’ll see St Giles Cathedral and St Columba’s Free Church of Scotland, and Parliament Square, where Scotland’s legal and religious history unfolded.

You’ll walk over the same stones where public executions drew thousands of spectators, discover the secret street beneath North Bridge, and learn how volcanic geology shaped the city from Castle Rock to the Royal Mile. The tour ends at Greyfriars Kirkyard cemetery, where iron cages over graves tell the dark story of 19th-century body-snatching, and where Bobby the faithful dog kept his legendary vigil.

On this Edinburgh Old Town tour, you’ll:

• Hear about the underground vaults beneath North Bridge, once storage spaces that became homes for Edinburgh’s poorest residents
• Learn about Deacon Brodie, the respectable locksmith by day who led a gang of burglars by night, inspiring Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Stand on the Heart of Midlothian mosaic, where the old Tolbooth prison once held condemned criminals before their public executions
• Discover Mary King’s Close, the sealed plague street beneath the Royal Exchange, where victims were left to die in 1645
• Walk through the Grassmarket, where Scottish poet Robert Burns stayed and where ”Half-Hangit Maggie” miraculously survived her own execution
• Find out about the Victorian slum clearances that transformed the medieval Old Town into the largely reconstructed streetscape you see today

Step into Scotland’s capital, where every close and wynd has stories of triumph or tragedy to share.