Edinburgh · Self-guided audio walk

Grassmarket and Greyfriars

Below the castle, a market square that was also a gallows; above it, a town wall, a graveyard with a faithful dog, and a museum roof looking back over the Old Town.

6Stops
1.1 kmDistance
20+ minTime

Photo by Kalisa66 on Wikimedia Commons

The dip below Edinburgh Castle did the city's dirty work for centuries. The Grassmarket was its main market from 1477 and its public gallows until the 1780s, and both facts sit in the same cobbles: a dark shadow in the paving marks where the gibbet stood, beside a monument from 1937 to the Covenanters hanged here.

This walk goes down Victoria Street, built between 1829 and 1834, across the square and up the Vennel steps, past one of the best surviving stretches of the Flodden Wall. Then it crosses to Greyfriars Kirkyard, where 1,200 Covenanters were held in a field after the defeat at Bothwell Brig in 1679, and where Greyfriars Bobby's statue and grave keep the gate busy.

It ends at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, free to enter, with a roof terrace that looks over the Old Town to the castle.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Must see

Photo by Ralf Steinberger on Wikimedia Commons

Victoria Street

0:00

Built between 1829 and 1834, curving down from George IV Bridge to the square.

You're standing at the top of Victoria Street, where it leaves George IV Bridge and drops in a curve to the Grassmarket. The street is newer than it looks. It was built between 1829 and 1834, over the line of the old West Bow, and that older name still belongs to the bottom end. Walk down slowly and watch the curve do its work: it hides the square until you're almost in it, and then the whole Grassmarket opens below you.

Halfway down, turn round and look up. The castle sits directly above the rooftops, and this is one of the few places in the city where you can see it whole, from below, with no traffic in the way. The shopfronts are what people photograph. The shape is what matters: a Victorian street built to turn a steep medieval slope into something you can stroll down.

At the bottom the square begins, and the lower stretch keeps the old name of the West Bow.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by N Chadwick on Wikimedia Commons

Covenanters' Memorial

0:00

A stone from 1937 to more than a hundred Covenanters hanged here.

This small monument at the east end of the square was paid for by public subscription in 1937. It remembers more than a hundred Covenanters hanged here between 1661 and 1688, and their names, where they are known, are recorded on a plaque nearby. Look at the paving. A dark shape is set into the cobbles beside the stone, the shadow of the gallows.

The Covenanters were Presbyterians who would not accept the king's authority over their church, and the years of their persecution are still called the Killing Time. One prisoner, offered his life if he swore loyalty to the Crown, refused it; the Duke of Rothes is said to have remarked that the man had chosen to glorify God in the Grassmarket. Contemporary accounts describe the gallows being put up before dawn on the morning of a hanging and taken down again the night after, as if it had grown out of the earth in the dark. All that is left of it now is the shape in the paving at your feet.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Must see

Photo by Bree Anne on Unsplash

Grassmarket

0:00

The city's market from 1477, and its gallows until the 1780s.

The Grassmarket is the old market place of the city, and it first appears in writing in 1363, described as the street of new buildings under the castle. That is still a fair description of what you are standing in. The market itself was granted its charter in 1477. Livestock was sold at the western end, butter, cheese and wool at the eastern end, and the cobbles under your feet have been replaced many times since the fifteenth century.

Now look north. The castle rock rises almost straight up from the back of the square, and this view, with nothing much in the way, is the one painters and photographers have always come here for. Behind you, near the memorial, stands the Last Drop, a pub whose name comes straight out of the history you have just been hearing. Walk west along the middle of the square, past more pubs and tenements, toward the Vennel.

Today the square lives on tables outside, on drinkers and on a farmers' market. At the western end, a strip of lighter paving crosses the cobbles, marking where the Flodden Wall ran.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 6 continue in the app

Vennel

Steep steps past the Flodden Wall, with the castle down the gap.

in app

Greyfriars Kirkyard

Bobby's statue at the gate, the Covenanters' prison field inside.

in app

National Museum of Scotland

Free museum on Chambers Street, with a roof terrace over the Old Town.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

Is the National Museum of Scotland free to visit?

General admission to the National Museum of Scotland is free, and it opens daily from 10:00 to 17:00, closing only on 25 December. Some special exhibitions charge.

SourceNational Museums Scotland: National Museum of Scotland

What is there to see at Greyfriars Kirkyard?

Greyfriars Kirkyard has Bobby's statue at the gate, and inside the Covenanters' prison field marks where around 1,200 Covenanters were held after the Battle of Bothwell Brig in 1679.

How hard is the Vennel?

The Vennel is a steep flight of steps up from the Grassmarket's south side, passing one of the best surviving stretches of the Flodden Wall, with the castle framed in the gap.

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Provenance · last verified September 26, 2026

Built from the Wayside route itself: the stops, their order, and the walk between them.

Photo by Kalisa66 on Wikimedia Commons · CC0

Photo by Ralf Steinberger on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

Photo by N Chadwick on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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