We’ve been having fun playing tourists in Edinburgh over the past couple months. One of the attractions we tried out was The Real Mary King’s Close.
If you’ve spent any time on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, you may have noticed that there are several extremely narrow alleyways off of it which are called “closes”. There’s Old Fishmarket close, Advocate’s Close, and so on (there’s actually a website which catalogues all the existing closes). There used to be a whole lot more of these closes in the medieval city back in the day. These narrow streets lined with tall buildings sloped dramatically down the hill towards the Nor Loch, the swampy lake which used to exist where the train station and Princes Street Gardens are today.
So where did all the other medieval closes go? As it turns out, some of them still exist, hidden beneath the more modern buildings that line part of the Royal Mile today. When the Royal Exchange was built, the existing buildings had their tops chopped off; their bottoms were used as a foundation for the new buildings. They were largely forgotten about for a while, until tours into the now-underground Mary King’s Close started in 2003.
Which brings me to our visit to the Real Mary King’s Close. The hour-long tour is led by one of several period-costumed characters based on actual people who lived or worked on Mary King’s Close. As a group you descend into the dimly-lit underground close.
The tour guide takes you from room to room while giving you an idea about what life was like on the close. Most of the stories lean towards the macabre, with tales of murders, plague, and raw sewage. The in-character guide managed to paint a vivid (if at times cheesy) picture of life on a close inside a walled city, a picture that made me awfully happy that Edinburgh’s population density has dropped dramatically in recent centuries. And plumbing, it renewed my appreciation for plumbing.
Who should go? People who like to learn about history through personal stories; tourists hoping to take a walking tour on a day when the weather isn’t cooperating.
Who should skip it? Those with a low tolerance for hammy acting and cheesy jokes; claustrophobes.
Even if you’re not up for a trip underground, the courtyard cafe might be worth a stop on a nice day as a little rest from the hustle and bustle of the Royal Mile. (No photography is allowed in Mary King’s Close, which is why this post is mostly illustrated with photos of other closes.)