Four days in Edinburgh: the best looking city in Britain, and it knows it

An afternoon on the hill above the station, a day on the Royal Mile from the castle down, the palace and the volcano at the other end, and a last morning in the galleries.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Edinburgh
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Edinburgh is two towns that never merged. The old one runs down a tail of rock from the castle to the palace in a single mile of tenements, wynds and closes, built upwards because there was nowhere else to build. The new one was laid out below it in the 1760s on a grid of wide streets and squares, because the people with money wanted air and symmetry and got both. You can stand on Princes Street with one on each side and see the whole argument at once.

It is a small capital, about half a million people, and the centre is walkable end to end in forty minutes. That size is misleading. The national museum, the national gallery and the portrait gallery are all free and all serious, the castle is the most visited paid attraction in Scotland, and there is a 251 metre hill in a park fifteen minutes from the Parliament.

Four days is enough for both towns, the two ends of the Royal Mile and the climb, without spending any of it on a bus. The weather will do whatever it wants; bring a coat and stop consulting the forecast.

Highlights

  • A fortress on a volcanic plug that has been in continuous use for eleven hundred years
  • A ruined copy of the Parthenon on a hill, abandoned when the money ran out
  • The Lewis chess pieces and Dolly the sheep, in a museum that charges nothing
  • A royal palace with the bloodstains of a 1566 murder still shown to visitors
  • A proper hill walk that starts at a bus stop in the middle of the capital

Where to stay

Edinburgh, three nights

The shape is simple once you see it. A ridge of rock runs west to east with the castle at the high end and the palace at the low one, and the mile between them is the old town. North of it, across the valley that holds the station and the gardens, the new town runs in straight lines down to the sea. South of it are the university and the tenements of Marchmont and Bruntsfield.

Stay in the old town if you want to walk out of the door into it, in the new town if you want quiet and better rooms for the money, and in the streets around the university if you want the version of the city that is not performing. Nothing in that list is more than twenty five minutes on foot from anything else.

Day by day

Day 1 in Edinburgh

Calton Hill, the monument and the first evening

Start high, because the city only makes sense from above. The crag at the east end of Princes Street takes ten minutes to walk up and gives you the whole layout: the castle on its rock, the ridge of the old town running towards you, the Georgian grid to the left and the Firth of Forth beyond it.

The classical wreck on top was meant to be a full copy of the Parthenon, a memorial to the Scottish dead of the Napoleonic wars. Building began in 1826, the subscription ran dry after twelve columns, and it has stood unfinished ever since. Locals have called it the disgrace of Edinburgh for two centuries and would be appalled if anyone finished it.

Come down the far side to the old burial ground on the corner, then walk back along Princes Street to the black Gothic spike at the other end of the gardens.

  1. 15:30

    Calton Hill

    Nature

    Ten minutes up from Waterloo Place for the best view in the city: an unfinished Parthenon, an upturned telescope of a tower for Nelson, and an old observatory that now shows contemporary art.

  2. 17:30

    Old Calton Cemetery

    Historic

    A small Georgian graveyard on the way down, with David Hume in a round mausoleum and a memorial to Scots who died in the American Civil War, complete with a statue of Lincoln.

  3. 19:00

    Scott Monument

    Historic

    Sixty one metres of blackened Gothic over a seated statue of Walter Scott and his dog. Two hundred and eighty seven steps to the top platform, no lift, and the stair gets narrow near the top.

  4. 20:30

    Dinner in the old town

    Eat

    Walk up onto the ridge for the evening. The wide cobbled square under the castle rock, once the cattle market and the place public hangings were held, is now ringed with pubs and is the easiest place in the city to end up eating.

With more time: If the light is good, keep walking west into the Georgian streets instead: broad grey terraces, fanlights over every door, and a preserved townhouse museum on one of the big squares that shows how they were actually lived in.

Day 2 in Edinburgh

The castle, the High Kirk and the national museum

The castle opens at half past nine and the first hour is the good one. It is not a single building but a walled town on a volcanic plug: a great hall, the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny, a war museum, and a chapel from about 1130 that is the oldest surviving building in the city. Book a timed slot before you come.

At one o'clock a gun is fired from the north battery, as it has been every day but Sunday since 1861, and everyone within half a mile jumps. Then walk downhill. The Royal Mile drops from the castle gate in a straight line, and the crowned spire halfway along belongs to the High Kirk of St Giles, which everybody calls the cathedral and which technically is not one.

Turn off at the bridge for the national museum, which is free, enormous and much better than that suggests. Its roof terrace is one of the few high views in the city nobody queues for.

  1. 09:30

    Edinburgh Castle

    Historic

    Eleven hundred years of continuous use on top of a volcanic rock. Give it two hours for the crown jewels, the great hall and St Margaret's Chapel, and be there at opening or after three.

  2. 12:30

    St Giles

    Religious

    The church at the middle of the Royal Mile, medieval under a lot of Victorian restoration. Go in for the Thistle Chapel, a tiny riot of carved oak built in 1911 for Scotland's order of knights.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch off the Mile

    Eat

    The lanes running south towards the bridges are where people who work here eat. Anything on the Mile itself with a photographed menu is aimed at somebody who will only pass once.

  4. 14:30

    National Museum of Scotland

    Culture

    Free, and one of the best museums in Britain. The Lewis chess pieces, Dolly the sheep, a Victorian grand gallery with a clock that performs on the hour, and a roof terrace looking straight at the castle.

With more time: Two good additions on the same stretch of the Mile: the guided tour of the sealed off medieval alleys under the City Chambers, preserved when the exchange was built over them in the 1750s, and the camera obscura near the castle, which has projected a live panorama of the city onto a white dish since the 1850s. Both need booking in summer.

Day 3 in Edinburgh

Holyrood, the Parliament and Arthur's Seat

The other end of the Mile is the royal one. The palace is mostly a rebuild of the 1670s on a much older abbey site, and the room people come for is the small turret chamber where Mary Queen of Scots was dining in 1566 when her husband's men dragged out her secretary David Rizzio and stabbed him fifty odd times on the floor outside. The abbey behind it has been a roofless ruin since the eighteenth century and is the best part.

Across the road is the Parliament, finished in 2004 by a Catalan architect who died before it opened, three years late and ten times over budget. Scotland has not agreed about it since. Go in and look anyway: the debating chamber and the lobby are open to anyone on non sitting days, and the detail up close is extraordinary.

Then climb the volcano. The path up from the Parliament end is the steep one and the road round the back is the gentler one, and either way it is an hour up through gorse and rock to a summit at 251 metres with the whole of the city, the Firth and Fife laid out below.

  1. 09:30

    Holyrood Palace

    Historic

    The king's official residence in Scotland: state apartments, the Rizzio murder room, a ruined thirteenth century abbey and a garden under the crags. Closed for about a week each summer.

  2. 12:00

    Scottish Parliament

    Architecture

    Enric Miralles's building of 2004, all upturned boats and bamboo and concrete. Free entry, no ticket needed when the chamber is not sitting, and the public gallery is open during debates on Tuesday to Thursday.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch before the climb

    Eat

    Eat at the bottom, not on the hill. There is nothing to buy on the way up and the cafes near the palace are the last chance.

  4. 14:00

    Arthur's Seat

    Nature

    An extinct volcano in a royal park, 251 metres up. About an hour to the top on a rough path, boots or grippy shoes, and it is genuinely windy at the summit even in June.

With more time: Not a walking day? Take the tram down to the old port instead and go aboard the decommissioned royal yacht, in service from 1954 to 1997 and preserved exactly as it was, right down to the deputy headmistress decor of the state apartments. The best restaurants in the city are a few streets away.

Day 4 in Edinburgh

The national gallery, then the train

Leave the last morning for the collection on the Mound, which is free, small enough to see properly in ninety minutes and sits two minutes from the station. Titian, Vermeer, Raeburn's skating minister, and a set of Scottish galleries on the lowest floor that reopened in 2023 after years of building work.

Then down the steps into Waverley, which is the one part of the city that is genuinely below everything else.

  1. 09:00

    Left luggage at Waverley

    Note

    There is a staffed left luggage office in the station, so the morning does not have to be spent carrying a bag around a gallery.

  2. 10:00

    National Galleries of Scotland: National

    Culture

    Free, and a short walk from the platforms. Enter from the plaza between the gallery and the academy; a basement passage joins the two, and the Scottish rooms downstairs are the reason to come.

With more time: With a later train, the portrait gallery on Queen Street is ten minutes north and is the better building of the two: red sandstone neo Gothic, with a gilded frieze of Scottish history running round the great hall.

Before you go

Getting in

Trains from London take about four and a half hours on the east coast line and arrive at Waverley, which sits in the valley between the two towns with exits at both levels. Glasgow is fifty minutes away, with four trains an hour at peak times.

The airport is eight miles west. The tram runs from the terminal door to the top of Princes Street in about half an hour, the airport bus takes a similar time and runs through the night, and a taxi is roughly thirty pounds. All three are simple, so take whichever is standing there.

Getting around

Walk. The whole of the old town and most of the new one sit inside a square kilometre, and the buses are for the outskirts rather than the centre. What the map will not tell you is that this is a city of levels: streets cross other streets from forty feet above, and the shortest route between two points often involves a flight of stairs down a close.

For anything further out, the burgundy Lothian buses take contactless cards, cap the daily fare automatically and give no change in coins. The tram runs one line, from the airport through the centre to Leith and the water.

What to book, and what not to

Book the castle online for a timed slot, especially between June and September when it sells out on the day. Book the underground close tour too, for the same reason. Everything else here can be walked into.

The two national galleries and the national museum are free and take no bookings, which makes them the reliable fallback when it rains. The palace closes for about a week in the summer when the king is in residence, and the dates are published a season ahead.

August, and whether to avoid it

For three weeks in August the Fringe, the International Festival, the book festival and the military tattoo all run at once. The programme runs to several thousand shows, venues appear in church halls and basements that are storerooms for the other eleven months, and every spare room in the city was let by spring at well above the usual rate.

It is genuinely one of the great things that happens anywhere, and it is a difficult time to see the city itself. If the arts are the reason you are coming, come in August and book a bed months ahead. If the city is the reason, come in May or September, when the light is long and the queues are not.

Eating and drinking

Scottish cooking has been quietly excellent for two decades now: shellfish from the west coast, beef, game in autumn, and more good bakeries per street than any city this size deserves. Leith, the old port at the bottom of the hill, holds most of the ambitious restaurants and is a twenty minute tram ride or a long downhill walk along the Water of Leith.

Pubs still keep to older hours than London and the good ones are unrenovated on purpose. Whisky bars will happily talk you through a flight; ask for something from Islay if you want the peat, from Speyside if you do not.

Edinburgh rewards looking up and looking down. The best things here are rarely at eye level: a spire seen from a bridge, a street running underneath the one you are on, a view of the sea appearing at the end of a Georgian terrace.

Walk the Mile once in each direction, once in daylight and once late, and it will not be the same street.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Edinburgh?
It is the right length. Three covers the castle, the Mile and one museum; the fourth is what buys you the palace end, the hill or a day trip. Any longer and you would be going out of town anyway, to Stirling, St Andrews or the coast.
When should I go?
May, June and September are the best months: long light, tolerable crowds, rooms at normal prices. August is the festival, which is wonderful and fills every bed in the city. Winter is dark by four in the afternoon, which some people love and nobody should be surprised by.
Do I need to book the castle in advance?
Yes, from about Easter to October. Timed tickets sell out on the day in high summer and the queue at the gate is not the way to find that out. The underground close tour books out just as fast.
How much walking is this?
Five to eight kilometres a day, plus a real hill on the third. The old town is steep in every direction and the closes are all steps, so the flat distance understates it. Buses cover anything you would rather not walk.
Is Edinburgh expensive?
Accommodation is, especially in August when rates climb steeply. Eating and drinking are cheaper than London, and three of the best things here, the national museum and both national galleries, cost nothing at all.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: move the climb to a drier day, add a night, swap the gallery morning for the coast, delete whatever does not appeal.