A seventeenth-century street sealed under the City Chambers, where people went on living after the building was put on top of them.
Edinburgh’s Old Town is built on a ridge with steep sides, and the medieval city solved its space problem by building extremely tall tenements down those slopes, separated by narrow lanes called closes running at right angles off the High Street.
In 1753 the city began building the Royal Exchange, now the City Chambers, on top of one of them. The upper storeys of the tenements were demolished, the lower storeys were used as foundations, and the close itself was roofed over. People continued to live and trade in parts of it for decades afterwards.
It sat largely sealed until it was opened as a visitor attraction in 2003.
The tour
Guided, in small groups, about an hour. You go down into the actual seventeenth-century street and into the rooms off it — a merchant’s house, a grave-digger’s, a saw-maker’s workshop — with the vaulted underside of the City Chambers overhead.
The guides are in character, and how much you enjoy that depends on your tolerance for it. The physical fabric underneath is genuine and remarkable regardless: doorways worn by three centuries of use, fireplaces, a drain running down the middle of the street.
The plague
Mary King’s Close was hit hard by the plague of 1645. The persistent legend is that the authorities sealed the street with its inhabitants inside and left them to die.
This did not happen. Historians have found no evidence for it, and there is good evidence that plague victims were quarantined, treated by a plague doctor — George Rae, who was paid handsomely and had trouble collecting — and that the close was reoccupied afterwards. The tour is now reasonably honest about this, which it has not always been.
Annie’s room
A small chamber where, in 1992, a Japanese psychic reported the presence of a child. Visitors began leaving dolls and toys, and there are now hundreds, contributed continuously. Whatever you make of the origin, the accumulation itself is genuinely affecting.
Practicalities
Book online in advance. No under-fives. The route involves steep steps, uneven floors and low headroom, and is not step-free. It is cold — around 12°C — so bring a layer even in August.
Photography is not permitted on the tour.
If you want the same idea without the character guiding, the Real Mary King’s Close has a competitor in the Edinburgh Vaults under South Bridge, which are emptier, darker and less interpreted.
More History
Greyfriars Kirkyard
Where the Covenant was signed, where the body snatchers worked, and where a small dog became the city's most profitable legend.
Old Calton Burial Ground
David Hume's mausoleum, a monument to five reformers transported to Australia, and Abraham Lincoln, all in one small graveyard.