The Royal Mile
It's a mile long, but not quite an English mile: Edinburgh's great ridge-top street runs from a castle on a volcano to a palace in a park, and it's packed with ghosts, saints and hanged gentlemen.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Old Town, Edinburgh, running downhill from Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse
- Length
- About 1.8 km, a Scots mile, which was longer than an English one
- Made up of
- Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, Canongate and Abbey Strand, four streets that read as one
- Origins
- Medieval; the ridge was settled around the castle and grew after Holyrood Abbey was founded in 1128
- Landforms
- A tail of rock left behind by glaciers, trailing east from the volcanic plug of Castle Rock
- Famous side streets
- Dozens of closes and wynds branching off in a herringbone pattern
- Heritage status
- Part of the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1995
- Landmarks along it
- St Giles' Cathedral, Gladstone's Land, John Knox House, Canongate Kirk and the Scottish Parliament
A street shaped by a volcano and a glacier
Edinburgh's most famous street exists because of geology. Castle Rock is the plug of an ancient volcano, and when ice sheets ground past it they scraped away the softer ground on either side but left a long tapering ridge of rock and debris trailing eastward behind it. Geologists call the formation a crag and tail. The Royal Mile follows that spine all the way down. Settlers got a defensible hilltop at one end and a gentle slope below it, and the town grew along the ridge because there was nowhere else to put it. The result is a street that is steep and narrow with a high-rise heritage. With the ridge too tight to spread out, builders went upwards, and the tenements known as lands rose to extraordinary heights for their time.
Why a mile isn't quite a mile
The Royal Mile is usually described as a Scots mile, which was longer than the English one, and the street comes out at roughly 1.8 km. It isn't one street at all but a chain of four with different names: Castlehill, the Lawnmarket, the High Street and the Canongate, with Abbey Strand at the very bottom. The names tell you what each stretch was for. The Lawnmarket was where linen and cloth were sold. The High Street was the main market and civic heart. The Canongate was once a separate burgh, named for the canons of Holyrood Abbey, which David I founded in 1128. The abbey is also why the street ended up with a royal palace at the bottom, and so with its name: a road between a castle and a palace used by Scottish monarchs.
Closes, wynds and a very tall neighbourhood
Look to the side and you'll see narrow openings between the buildings. These are the closes and wynds, dozens of them, dropping away from the main street in a pattern often compared to a fishbone. Each took its name from a trade, a landowner or a famous resident, and many still carry it. Gladstone's Land, a six-storey 17th-century tenement now looked after by the National Trust for Scotland, gives a sense of how cramped and layered life was. Merchants and families lived stacked above one another, with shops below. The famous story that residents shouted "gardyloo" from upper windows before emptying their waste into the street is repeated on every tour. Its supposed French roots, gardez l'eau, are neat enough that it's worth treating as a good tale rather than a proven one. And the legend of plague victims bricked up in Mary King's Close is exactly that: a legend. The real close lies buried under the City Chambers, built across it in the 18th century.
Saints, reformers and a respectable villain
Midway down, St Giles' Cathedral sits under its crown-shaped spire. It was the church of John Knox, the Reformation leader, and outside it a heart-shaped pattern in the cobbles marks the site of the Old Tolbooth, the town's grim old prison. Locals traditionally spit on it for luck. Nearby, the statue of philosopher David Hume has a toe polished shiny by hopeful rubbing. Deacon Brodie, a respected cabinetmaker and town councillor by day and a burglar by night, was hanged in 1788. His double life is widely credited as an inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Brodie's Close still bears his name. Further down, John Knox House is one of the oldest buildings on the street, though Knox's connection to it is traditional rather than certain. In Canongate Kirkyard lies Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations.
From castle gate to parliament door
At the top, the Esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle hosts the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a fixture since 1950. Near it, the Outlook Tower houses a camera obscura that has projected views of the city for generations. At the bottom, the Palace of Holyroodhouse stands beside the ruins of the abbey. Mary, Queen of Scots lived there in the 1560s, and it's still the monarch's official residence in Scotland. Across the road, the Scottish Parliament building opened in 2004, a modern counterpart to all those centuries of royal comings and goings. In August the High Street becomes an open-air stage for Fringe performers and flyer-wielding comedians. For the best experience, don't just stay on the main road. Duck down a close, look up at the tall stone fronts, and notice how quickly the noise falls away.
Notable people
- David I
- John Knox
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- Deacon Brodie
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Adam Smith
- David Hume
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The Palace of Holyroodhouse
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Debtors once ran for this palace's doorstep to escape arrest, and a royal stag-hunting legend gave it its name. Today it's the King's Scottish home.