A curved terrace of coloured shopfronts under a raised walkway, and the square below where they used to hang people.
Victoria Street was cut in the 1830s as part of the Improvement Acts, driving a curved road down from George IV Bridge to the Grassmarket to replace the impossibly steep West Bow. The result is a two-level street: shops at road level, and above them Victoria Terrace, a raised pedestrian walkway with its own row of buildings.
The shopfronts are painted in strong colours — red, green, ochre, blue — which is not a historic scheme but has been there long enough to be the street’s identity.
The shops
Genuinely independent, which is rarer than it should be in a city centre. Bookshops, including the Old Town Bookshop and Golden Hare’s sibling trade. Cheese at IJ Mellis. Brushes at Robert Cresser, which has sold nothing but brushes since 1873. Joke and magic at Aha Ha Ha. Whisky at the Bow Bar, which is a pub rather than a shop and has around 300 malts and no music.
There is also a great deal of Harry Potter merchandise, because the street is widely claimed as the model for Diagon Alley. Rowling wrote in Edinburgh and the resemblance is real; whether she had this street specifically in mind is unconfirmed. Two dedicated Potter shops now trade on it and the pavement outside them is often blocked.
The Grassmarket
At the bottom, a wide open market square directly under the castle rock, which is the best free view of the castle in the city.
It was Edinburgh’s execution site for two centuries. Over a hundred Covenanters were hanged here in the 1660s to 1680s, and there is a memorial in the cobbles marking the site of the gallows. Maggie Dickson, hanged in 1724, revived in her coffin on the way to Musselburgh and lived another forty years; the pub named after her is on the square.
The square now holds pubs and restaurants with outdoor tables — the White Hart Inn claims to be Edinburgh’s oldest, and Burns and Wordsworth both stayed in it — and gets loud at weekends.
Practicalities
Free to walk. Shops keep ordinary hours and most close on Sunday afternoons. The street is steep and cobbled.
The Vennel Steps at the west end of the Grassmarket climb up to Heriot Place and give the postcard view of the castle framed between tenement walls, which is where half the photographs of Edinburgh Castle are actually taken from.