The Edinburgh Castle & Royal Mile combo tour costs £51 per adult and packs two of Edinburgh’s biggest attractions into a single guided morning or afternoon. In about two hours, you walk the cobbled length of the Royal Mile with a local guide — past St Giles’ Cathedral, down the colourful curve of Victoria Street, … Read more
The youngest prisoner held in Edinburgh Castle’s prisons was six years old, captured at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He was one of over a thousand men — sailors, soldiers, and at least twenty-one Caribbean pirates — who passed through the stone vaults beneath Crown Square between 1757 and 1814. The Prisons of War … Read more
Edinburgh Castle has enough to fill an entire day, but most visitors have two to three hours. That’s plenty — if you know what to prioritise. These are the 12 Edinburgh Castle highlights that consistently deliver, ranked in the order I’d recommend seeing them if you’re short on time. Everything on this list is included … Read more
Edinburgh Castle has been besieged at least 26 times — more than any other place in Britain. The volcanic rock it sits on has been a fortified site for over 3,000 years. And unlike most historic castles, this one isn’t a ruin: it’s still garrisoned, still evolving, and still at the heart of Scottish national … Read more
In 2001, a team of researchers sent 240 volunteers into Edinburgh Castle’s vaults. None knew the castle’s ghost stories. None were told which rooms had been reported as haunted for centuries. Over the course of 10 days, more than half reported unexplained experiences — cold spots, shadow figures, the feeling of being watched, even a … Read more
England’s Crown Jewels are reproductions. The originals were melted down by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, turned into coins, and lost forever. Scotland’s Crown Jewels survived — but only because two women smuggled them out of a besieged castle hidden in sacks of wool and buried them under a church floor for nine years. The Honours … Read more
The Stone of Destiny is no longer at Edinburgh Castle. If you’re planning a visit to the Crown Room expecting to see the ancient coronation stone of Scottish kings, you need to know — it moved to Perth Museum in 2024. But the Stone’s connection to Edinburgh Castle runs deep. It sat in the Crown … Read more
Every day at precisely 1 pm, a 105mm field gun fires from the walls of Edinburgh Castle. Tourists jump. Locals check their watches. This has been happening since 1861 — and the reason it started involves foggy weather, a Parisian garden, and the problem of calculating longitude at sea. When: Every day at 1pm, except … Read more
