Old Town Historical and Underground Tour

Led by either the holder of a PhD in Scottish history or a guide with decades of experience providing historic tours in Scotland’s capital, this 90-minute tour is a fascinating journey through Edinburgh’s celebrated Old Town. Revel in the majesty of the famous Royal Mile with its stunning architecture, but also visit the secluded closes and courts lying just off the High Street and discover their dramatic stories. Find out about the world famous poets, novelists, philosophers and inventors who called this neighbourhood home but also the notorious thieves, murderers and bodysnatchers who stalked the streets after dark. The tour includes a trip through Canongate Kirkyard and a visit to our underground vaults below South Bridge, where you will find out how it came to be and who used to live there.   

The tour begins outside our ticket office in the epicentre of the Royal Mile where your guide will welcome you and provide a general introduction to Edinburgh and its history. Be sure to ask about the story behind our ticket office which was a former police box! Then your guide will lead you onto South Bridge where you will spend the next half hour underground travelling through our section of underground street. Hear how and why South Bridge was constructed and examine the eighteenth-century bridge arches and stonework from the former houses along the former street. Get a very real sense as to what it was like for an ordinary person to live in this age-old metropolis.  

Next, the tour returns above ground to Royal Mile and you will journey through the “lower” half of the Old Town towards Holyrood Palace, visiting its half hidden yet beguiling closes wynds and courts. Get to know the incredible occurrences which shaped the city’s development such as devastating fires, collapsing stone buildings and bloody sieges. Learn who was the real-life inspiration for the fictional characters Robinson Crusoe, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Ebenezer Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes. 

For the final portion of the tour, travel around the stunning Canongate Kirkyard. This beautiful almost 400-year-old church has extensive royal connections, not just with the twelfth-century Scottish monarch David I but also the House of Stuart and even the modern House of Windsor. Amongst those buried inside the graveyard is Adam Smith the intellectual godfather of capitalism as well as literary muses for Robert Burns – Scotland’s national bard. The tour ends outside Canongate Kirkyard on the Royal Mile, but your guide will happily lead you back to the ticket office where the tour began.