The Royal Mile: Edinburgh’s Most Historic Street

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The Royal Mile is the spine of Edinburgh’s Old Town. It runs roughly one Scottish mile — about 1.8 kilometres — from Edinburgh Castle at the top of the volcanic ridge down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the foot. Every step along it covers a different chapter of Scottish history.

Despite its name, the Royal Mile is not a single street. It’s a series of streets joined end to end: Castlehill, the Lawnmarket, the High Street, the Canongate, and the Abbey Strand. Each section has its own character, its own buildings, and its own history. Together they form one of the most historically dense stretches of road in Europe.

If you’re visiting Edinburgh — or thinking about it — the Royal Mile deserves more than a passing walk. Here’s what you’ll actually find there.

The Layout: From Castle to Palace

Edinburgh Castle sits at the top, perched on a plug of volcanic basalt that rises sharply above the city. The castle has been occupied in some form for over 3,000 years. What you see today is largely 16th and 17th century, though the 12th-century St Margaret’s Chapel — the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh — still stands inside its walls.

From the castle esplanade, Castlehill leads east into the Lawnmarket. This was the market area of medieval Edinburgh, where cloth and goods were sold. The name comes from “landmarket” — a market for country produce brought in from outside the town walls.

The Lawnmarket opens into the High Street, the longest section and the true heart of the mile. St Giles’ Cathedral stands here, recognisable by its distinctive crown steeple — one of the few remaining examples of this architectural form in Scotland. The cathedral has stood on this site since at least the 12th century, though it was substantially rebuilt after a fire in 1385. The crown steeple was added in the 15th century.

Just past St Giles’ is Parliament Square, where Scotland’s old parliament met before the Acts of Union in 1707. The Parliament House still stands, now home to Scotland’s supreme law courts. Embedded in the cobblestones nearby is the Heart of Midlothian — a heart-shaped mosaic marking the site of the old Tolbooth prison. Local tradition says you spit on it for luck, though the origin of this custom is disputed.

Further down, the High Street becomes the Canongate. This was once a separate burgh — an independent town outside Edinburgh’s walls. The Canongate Kirkyard holds the graves of several notable Scots, including the economist Adam Smith and the poet Robert Fergusson.

At the bottom, the Palace of Holyroodhouse has been the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland since the 16th century. It began as a guesthouse for the adjacent Holyrood Abbey, founded in 1128. The ruins of that abbey still stand in the palace grounds. The palace is open to visitors for most of the year, though it closes when the Royal Family is in residence — usually in late June and early July.

The Closes and Wynds

The closes and wynds running off the Royal Mile are where the real history lives. Edinburgh’s medieval population was packed into a small area on the ridge, and buildings grew upward rather than outward. The tall stone tenements lining the mile were among the earliest high-rise buildings in Europe, some reaching ten or more storeys.

A close is a narrow alleyway, usually leading to a courtyard or further buildings behind. A wynd is slightly wider — more of a lane than an alleyway. There are over 100 closes off the Royal Mile.

Advocate’s Close, just off the High Street, offers one of the most striking views in Edinburgh — a narrow passage that frames a direct line of sight toward Princes Street and the New Town below. The close is named after Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, Lord Advocate of Scotland in the early 18th century.

Mary King’s Close is the most famous of them all. When the city built the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers) over this section of the Old Town in the 1750s, the lower levels of the close were effectively sealed. The rooms and passages below street level survived largely intact. Today you can take a guided tour through them — it’s one of the more unusual visitor experiences in Scotland, and genuinely atmospheric.

White Horse Close, at the Canongate end, dates from the 17th century and was once a coaching inn. Stagecoaches to London departed from here. The close has been carefully restored and now contains private residences. It looks much as it would have in the 1600s.

Riddle’s Court, off the Lawnmarket, is a fine example of a Renaissance courtyard. It was built for a wealthy merchant in the late 16th century and hosted a banquet for King James VI of Scotland and his new Danish queen, Anne of Denmark, in 1598. The building has recently been restored by the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust.

Key Buildings Worth Stopping For

John Knox House stands on the High Street and is one of the oldest surviving medieval buildings in Edinburgh. It dates from the 15th century and takes its name from the Protestant reformer who may have lived here in the 1560s — though historians debate this. The house is now a museum and also serves as the entrance to the Scottish Storytelling Centre next door.

Gladstone’s Land, on the Lawnmarket, is a 17th-century merchant’s house preserved by the National Trust for Scotland. The ground floor was once a shop with open arcades facing the street — a common arrangement in Edinburgh at the time. The upper floors show how a prosperous Edinburgh merchant would have lived in the 1620s. It’s one of the most complete survivals of its kind in Scotland.

The Museum of Edinburgh is in Canongate and covers the city’s history from prehistoric times to the present. Entry is free. It’s a good place to get the full picture of how Edinburgh developed over the centuries — and to see some of the objects, including documents relating to the Scottish Covenant and various items from the Old Town’s past.

The Scottish Parliament sits at the foot of the Canongate, just before the palace. The building was completed in 2004 and designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles, who died before it was finished. It’s a controversial building architecturally — it divides opinion sharply — but it’s worth a look. Free public tours are available when parliament is not in session.

Practical Information for Visitors

Getting there: The Royal Mile is in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. From Waverley Station, it’s a 10-minute walk up the steps at the east end of Princes Street. From Haymarket Station, it takes around 20 minutes on foot. Buses run along Princes Street and George IV Bridge, both close to the mile.

When to go: The Royal Mile is busiest in August during the Edinburgh Festival, when the street itself becomes a performance space. If you want to walk it without crowds, early morning is best — before 9am the close-packed tourists haven’t arrived yet. Winter is quieter and the light on the Old Town can be remarkable on clear days.

How long to allow: You can walk the length of the Royal Mile in 20 minutes, but that would be doing it a disservice. Allow at least half a day if you want to explore the main closes, visit Gladstone’s Land or John Knox House, and walk through to the palace. A full day lets you add Edinburgh Castle at the top and a palace tour at the bottom.

Entry costs: Walking the mile itself is free. Edinburgh Castle charges admission (around £20 for adults as of 2026). The Palace of Holyroodhouse charges admission when open (around £18 for adults). Mary King’s Close tours are around £18. Gladstone’s Land is National Trust for Scotland — members enter free. The Museum of Edinburgh and the Scottish Parliament are free.

Food and drink: The Royal Mile has no shortage of places to eat. The Witchery by the Castle is one of the city’s most atmospheric restaurants, set in a 16th-century building near the castle gates. For something more straightforward, Deacon Brodie’s Tavern on the Lawnmarket serves reliable Scottish food and takes its name from William Brodie — the Edinburgh councillor by day and burglar by night who was the partial inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Brodie was hanged in 1788, on a gallows he had helped design himself.

The History Behind the Street

The Royal Mile developed because of geography. The long ridge between the castle rock and Arthur’s Seat was the logical place to build a town — defensible, with a reliable water supply from springs on the slopes below. By the 12th century, Edinburgh had grown enough to need a formal market and a charter from David I. The main street ran from the castle to the Abbey of Holyrood, which David had founded in 1128.

For several hundred years, this was Scotland’s capital in everything but name — the seat of government, the site of the courts, the location of Scotland’s principal churches. The Scottish parliament met nearby. The city’s merchants, lawyers, and clergy all lived within a few hundred metres of the High Street.

The population density was extraordinary. By the 17th century, Edinburgh’s Old Town was one of the most densely populated places in Europe. Rich and poor lived in the same buildings — wealthy families on the middle floors, the poorest tenants in the attics and basements. Sanitation was rudimentary at best. The phrase “gardyloo” — from the French gardez l’eau, “watch out for the water” — was supposedly shouted before emptying chamber pots from upper windows into the street below.

This began to change in the 18th century when the New Town was built across the valley to the north. Wealthy residents gradually moved there, leaving the Old Town to become a poorer, more neglected district. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw clearance of the worst slums, though much of the historic fabric was preserved.

The Old Town and New Town together were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, recognising Edinburgh as one of the best-preserved examples of planned Georgian urban development alongside a surviving medieval city.

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