Things to do in Edinburgh

Aberlady Bay on the south shore of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian was the first statutory Local Nature Reserve declared in Britain, a designation made in 1952 that recognised the exceptional ecological importance of this sheltered bay and its combination of intertidal mudflats, saltmarsh, dune grassland and scrub. The reserve provides outstanding birdwatching throughout the year and the combination of the wildlife interest, the coastal walking and the views across the Forth to Fife and the Lomond Hills makes Aberlady one of the most rewarding natural heritage sites on the East Lothian coast. The mudflats and sandflats of the bay provide feeding habitat for waders and wildfowl in numbers that make it one of the most important estuarine habitats on the Firth of Forth. Pink-footed geese arrive in autumn in large flocks on their way from Iceland to wintering grounds further south, and the bay supports a wide variety of wader species throughout the migratory season. The dune grassland behind the bay supports a diverse plant community and the scrub provides cover for a range of passerine migrants in spring and autumn. The historic connection of Aberlady with the early aviation history of Scotland is provided by the remains of the World War II airfield on the land behind the reserve, and the Aberlady Parish Church with its unusual round apse tower adds an architectural dimension to a visit that is principally focused on the wildlife and coastal scenery.

The Bass Rock is a volcanic island of dramatic appearance rising from the Firth of Forth near North Berwick in East Lothian, a 107-metre plug of basalt whose sheer white-encrusted cliffs are home to one of the largest single-rock gannet colonies in the world. The island supports a breeding colony of approximately 150,000 northern gannets, so many that the species was formally named Morus bassanus in recognition of the rock's primacy as a gannet site. The colony is visible and audible from the shore at North Berwick, but boat trips from the harbour provide a close encounter with the birds and the island of quite extraordinary intensity. The gannet colony occupies almost every available surface of the island during the breeding season from February to October, the birds packed so densely onto every ledge, slope and flat surface that the white guano-encrusted rock is effectively invisible beneath the mass of white plumage. The noise, the smell and the ceaseless activity of the colony on a calm summer day create a wildlife spectacle of genuine primordial power, quite unlike any other seabird experience available in Britain. The gannets' aerial fishing dives, plunging from heights of up to thirty metres into the Firth with folded wings, provide constant dramatic display in the waters surrounding the rock. The island also has a considerable historical and political significance. A castle was built on the rock in the fourteenth century, exploiting its natural defensibility, and the Bass Rock gained particular notoriety in the late seventeenth century as a state prison for Covenanters and Jacobites. In 1691 a small party of Jacobite prisoners managed to seize control of the castle from their captors and hold it for three years in defiance of the Williamite government, one of the more remarkable episodes of resistance in Scottish history. The Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick provides excellent background to the Bass Rock and the wildlife of the Firth of Forth, with live camera feeds from the colony and boat trips departing from the harbour.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse stands at the foot of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, nestled beneath the dramatic crags of Arthur's Seat, and serves as the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. It is a place of genuine historical depth and royal significance, the setting for some of the most dramatic episodes in Scottish history, and one of the most rewarding royal palaces in Britain to visit. The palace has its origins in an Augustinian abbey founded by King David I of Scotland in 1128. The abbey ruins that stand beside the palace today are all that remain of that original foundation after centuries of conflict and reformation. The royal lodgings associated with the abbey gradually developed into a proper palace from the fifteenth century onwards under successive Scottish monarchs of the House of Stuart, who found the location outside the confines of Edinburgh Castle more suited to courtly life. The most dramatic chapter in the palace's history belongs to Mary, Queen of Scots, who lived here during her brief reign in Scotland in the 1560s. It was in these rooms that her Italian secretary David Rizzio was stabbed repeatedly by a group of Protestant nobles in the presence of the pregnant queen in 1566, one of the most violent acts of court intrigue in Scottish history. The supper room where the murder took place is one of the most visited spaces in the palace, and a brass plaque in the floor marks the spot where Rizzio fell. Mary's private apartments are remarkably well preserved and provide an intimate connection to this turbulent period. The palace was significantly rebuilt and enlarged by King Charles II after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and the State Apartments created during this period reflect the grand Baroque decorative style fashionable at the time. The Great Gallery, the longest room in the palace, contains 110 portraits of Scottish monarchs by the Dutch artist Jacob de Wet, commissioned to demonstrate the ancient lineage of the Stuart dynasty. The paintings are remarkable for their sheer ambition even if historical accuracy was clearly not always the primary concern. Today the palace is used by the monarch during the annual Royal Week in Scotland each June or July, when a programme of garden parties and investitures takes place. When the royal family is not in residence the State Apartments and Mary Queen of Scots' Tower are open to visitors. The ruined nave of Holyrood Abbey, which adjoins the palace, can also be explored and adds a powerful sense of medieval history to the site. The palace gardens include the dramatic volcanic landscape of Arthur's Seat and Holyrood Park, which provide extraordinary walking and views across Edinburgh.

Arthur's Seat is the highest point in Edinburgh and one of the most prominent urban hills in Europe, an ancient volcano rising 251 metres above the city centre within Holyrood Park that provides panoramic views across Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth and the surrounding Lothian landscape from a summit accessible to walkers of all abilities within minutes of the city's major attractions. The hill takes its name from the legendary King Arthur, one of several locations across Britain that claim association with the mythological figure, and the combination of the dramatic volcanic topography, the panoramic views and the historical connections of the park make Arthur's Seat one of Edinburgh's most rewarding outdoor experiences. The volcanic geology of Arthur's Seat is one of its most interesting features. The hill is the eroded remnant of a volcano that was active approximately 350 million years ago and whose lavas and intrusive igneous rocks were sculpted by glacial erosion during successive ice ages into the craggy profile visible today. The Salisbury Crags, the prominent line of dolerite cliffs below the main summit, were the subject of the geological observations made by James Hutton in the late eighteenth century that helped establish the science of geology and the concept of deep geological time, making this hill one of the birthplaces of modern earth science. The summit of Arthur's Seat is reached by several routes, the most popular ascending from St Margaret's Loch through the Gutted Haddie gully to the summit ridge, a walk of approximately forty-five minutes from the Holyrood Palace car park. The panorama from the top on a clear day is extraordinary, encompassing the full extent of Edinburgh from the castle to the Firth of Forth, the Bass Rock offshore and the hills of Fife across the water.

Leith is the historic port district of Edinburgh, a place with its own strong identity separate from the medieval Old Town on the hill above and now one of the most vibrant and interesting neighbourhoods in Scotland. The harbour has served Edinburgh's maritime needs for over eight centuries and has handled everything from medieval trade with the Baltic and Netherlands to warships, emigrants and whisky exports in more recent centuries. Today Leith's waterfront has been transformed into a bustling destination while retaining strong connections to its working port heritage. The most famous vessel berthed at Leith is the Royal Yacht Britannia, the decommissioned royal yacht that served as the floating residence of the Queen and the Royal Family from 1953 until 1997. Now permanently moored at Ocean Terminal, the yacht offers one of the most intimate and genuinely fascinating royal experiences available anywhere in Britain. Self-guided tours with audio commentary allow visitors to explore the royal apartments, the state dining room and the engine room, giving a vivid sense of life aboard the yacht during state visits and royal holidays. The scale and detail of the royal family's personal quarters, rather modest compared to expectations, is often the element that surprises visitors most. The Shore, Leith's historic waterfront street, runs along the Water of Leith from the harbour and is lined with some of Edinburgh's best independent restaurants, bars and cafés. The area's maritime character has been preserved in the old trading warehouses and merchants' buildings along the water, and the mix of working port infrastructure, converted heritage buildings and contemporary restaurants gives Leith a character distinct from anywhere else in the city. The story of Leith's role in Scotland's history is told at the Leith Archive and through various interpretation boards along the waterfront walk. The area was technically a separate burgh from Edinburgh until it was absorbed into the city in 1920 and still retains a sense of independent identity that its residents tend to cultivate carefully. Mary Queen of Scots arrived in Scotland for the last time at Leith Harbour in 1561, and the area witnessed some of the most dramatic moments in Edinburgh's complex political history. The Water of Leith Walkway follows the river from the harbour upstream through the city, providing a peaceful urban walking route that passes through the Dean Village, the Botanic Gardens and eventually reaches the Pentland Hills. Combined with a visit to the harbour, it provides a rewarding day exploring Edinburgh's neighbourhoods away from the Royal Mile.

Rosslyn Chapel near Roslin in Midlothian is one of the most elaborately decorated medieval buildings in Scotland, a small fifteenth-century collegiate church whose extraordinary carved stonework covering virtually every internal surface with biblical scenes, foliage, figures and symbolic motifs has fascinated scholars, occultists and ordinary visitors for centuries. The chapel was built by William Sinclair, first Earl of Orkney, between 1446 and 1484, and the density and quality of its carved decoration, far exceeding anything else produced in Scotland in this period, reflects both the exceptional wealth of the Sinclair family and an ambition in stone carving that remains difficult to fully explain. The chapel achieved worldwide celebrity with the publication of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code in 2003 and the subsequent film, both of which featured the chapel as the hiding place of the Holy Grail and wove an elaborate conspiracy narrative around its unusual decorative programme. The resulting surge of visitor interest transformed the chapel from a moderately visited Scottish heritage site into an internationally famous destination, bringing visitors from across the world who may or may not accept the novel's fictional framing but who find the chapel's extraordinary carved interior compelling for its genuine historical and artistic qualities. The Apprentice Pillar, the most celebrated of the chapel's carved columns, is a pillar of extraordinary ornamental complexity whose spiral bands of intertwining foliage rise from its base to an elaborately carved capital. The legend attached to it, in which the master mason killed his apprentice in a rage of jealousy upon returning from Rome to find the pillar completed to a standard he could not have achieved himself, is a Victorian invention but captures something of the genuine wonder that the column produces in observers. The surrounding Roslin Glen provides pleasant walking and the ruined Roslin Castle adds further medieval interest to the area.

The Royal Mile is the historic spine of Edinburgh's Old Town, a succession of streets connecting Edinburgh Castle at the top of the volcanic crag to the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the foot, descending approximately a mile in length and flanked throughout by a density of historic architecture, closes, courtyards and buildings that constitute one of the most concentrated collections of urban heritage in Europe. The streets of the Royal Mile, named from top to bottom the Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street and Canongate, together form the core of Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site and define the character and identity of one of the world's great historic cities. The architecture along the Royal Mile reflects eight centuries of urban development within the extraordinary constraints of the ridge between the castle crag and the Palace. The medieval street pattern, in which the principal street was flanked by long narrow plots running back from the frontage on either side, encouraged the construction of tall, narrow tenements that rose to remarkable heights as the population grew and the available land within the town walls was fully occupied. By the seventeenth century Edinburgh had some of the tallest residential buildings in Europe, the model for the later tenement form of Scottish urban housing that characterises the cities of central Scotland to the present day. The individual buildings along the Mile include John Knox House, the Writers' Museum, the Museum of Edinburgh in Huntly House, St Giles' Cathedral, the Mercat Cross and the Parliament House, all providing layers of historical and cultural association that make the Royal Mile far more than a tourist shopping street. The closes running off the main street on both sides, some preserved as heritage sites and others still in everyday use, provide glimpses into the layered history of the Old Town. The Scottish Parliament building at the foot of the Mile, opened in 2004, provides a striking architectural contrast to its historic surroundings.

Seacliff Beach near North Berwick in East Lothian is one of the most beautiful and least visited beaches in southeast Scotland, a small sandy bay backed by red sandstone cliffs with a remarkable combination of natural and human features including a narrow rock-cut harbour that is the smallest harbour in Britain and the ruins of Tantallon Castle on the headland above. The combination of the beach quality, the extraordinary harbour and the castle ruin makes Seacliff one of the most scenically and historically interesting short visits on the East Lothian coast. The tiny harbour at Seacliff was cut from the sandstone rock in the early nineteenth century by the landowner Andrew Loch at a cost that substantially exceeded any practical benefit it could provide for the local fishing industry, an act of eccentric and determined patronage that produced a harbour of remarkable character and minimal capacity. The harbour is cut almost entirely from the living rock of the headland and the boats that used it were small enough to be pulled up the rock ramp into the enclosed basin, a working arrangement of great charm that has been documented and celebrated as one of the most unusual harbours in the British Isles. The ruins of Tantallon Castle on the headland above the beach, managed by Historic Environment Scotland, are among the most dramatically positioned in Scotland, the great curtain wall of the fourteenth-century Douglas fortress rising from the very edge of the red sandstone cliffs in a defensive position of natural power. The combined experience of the beach, the harbour and the castle ruin makes Seacliff an exceptional destination despite its small scale.

Seton Collegiate Church near Longniddry in East Lothian is one of the finest and most complete medieval collegiate churches in Scotland, a late fourteenth-century church of considerable quality that preserves the choir and transepts of the original building in remarkable completeness, including the vaulted choir ceiling and the late medieval stone carvings that make it one of the most rewarding ecclesiastical heritage sites in the Lothians. Historic Environment Scotland manages the church, which is freely accessible to visitors. The church was founded as a collegiate establishment by Lady Janet Seton in 1492, although the fabric includes earlier work from the later fourteenth century when the Seton family first developed the church as a burial place. Collegiate churches, endowed to support a college of priests who sang masses for the souls of the founders and their families, were a major form of late medieval religious patronage in Scotland, and Seton represents one of the most architecturally distinguished examples of this institution. The church's association with Mary Queen of Scots gives it a historical resonance beyond its architectural interest. Mary visited Seton several times, playing golf on the links nearby in recorded accounts that make her one of the earliest named women golfers in history, and the Seton family were among her most loyal supporters. The proximity of the church to the site of Seton Palace, the Seton family seat destroyed in the seventeenth century, makes this corner of East Lothian one of the most layered Mary Queen of Scots landscapes in Scotland. The East Lothian coast near the church provides excellent walking and the nearby Gosford Estate with its Adam house provides further architectural and landscape interest.

Tantallon Castle on the East Lothian coast is one of the most dramatically positioned medieval fortifications in Scotland, a great curtain wall castle of the late fourteenth century built by the Douglas family on a promontory of red sandstone jutting into the Firth of Forth with the Bass Rock visible offshore. Historic Environment Scotland manages the castle, whose ruined but substantial remains provide some of the finest coastal views of any medieval castle in Scotland. The castle was built approximately 1350 for William Douglas, first Earl of Douglas, as the principal stronghold of the Black Douglas family. The massive curtain wall across the landward approach, rising to approximately fifteen metres and flanked by towers and a great twin-towered gatehouse, is one of the finest examples of curtain wall fortification in Scotland. The castle withstood several sieges before being finally reduced by Cromwellian artillery in 1651, and the marks of the bombardment can still be seen in the masonry. The combination of the great wall, the sea views, the Bass Rock offshore and the dramatic red sandstone cliffs dropping to the sea on three sides creates one of the most compelling castle visits in Scotland. The walk from the car park through the castle earthworks and out to the cliff edge provides views that place the fortress in its extraordinary coastal landscape context.