Edinburgh Castle

Twenty-six sieges, and the one that erased the medieval castle

Research published in 2014 counted 26 sieges in the castle's 1,100-year history, a tally that gives it a fair claim to being the most besieged place in Great Britain. The one that shaped what you see was the Lang Siege of 1573, when English artillery brought in for the Regent Morton battered the medieval defences into rubble on behalf of the King's party. Almost nothing above ground survived it.

The exceptions are the reason to come. St Margaret's Chapel, built about 1130, is the oldest building in Edinburgh. The Royal Palace and the early sixteenth-century Great Hall stand on the south and east sides of Crown Square. Everything else — the Half Moon Battery, the Forewall, the Portcullis Gate, Foog's Gate — is the rebuilt fortress that grew back over the ruins between 1573 and the Jacobite century.

David's Tower is still down there

The Half Moon Battery, the curved wall that everybody photographs from Princes Street, was raised between 1573 and 1588 straight over the wreck of David's Tower, the fourteenth-century keep the siege destroyed. Two storeys of the tower survive underneath and you can walk into them; the shattered masonry inside the battery is the actual damage from the 1573 bombardment, left visible on purpose.

Still a garrison, and Scotland's busiest paid attraction

The army never entirely left. The New Barracks hold the regimental headquarters of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Honours of Scotland are guarded by soldiers, and armed sentries stand at the Gatehouse outside opening hours. Historic Environment Scotland runs the visitor side.

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions counted 2,044,963 visitors here in 2025, up 3 per cent, which makes Edinburgh Castle Scotland's most visited paid attraction and the fifteenth busiest in the United Kingdom. One Scottish site drew more people that year and it is free: the National Museum of Scotland, at 2,318,305. That contrast is worth holding in mind when you plan a wet afternoon.

If you only have an hour, the castle's own shortest itinerary takes the Portcullis Gate, the Lang Stairs and St Margaret's Chapel and stops there. With two hours you add Crown Square, which is where the Honours, the Great Hall and the war memorial all stand.

The Honours, and what happened to them

The crown was made for James V and first worn at the coronation of Mary of Guise in 1540; Mary, Queen of Scots was the first monarch crowned with the crown and sceptre together, in 1543. The regalia were smuggled out and hidden between 1651 and 1660 to keep them from Cromwell's army, then locked in a chest in the Crown Room after the Act of Union in 1707 and forgotten for a century. Walter Scott had the room opened in 1818 and found them still in the chest, along with a silver wand nobody has explained since.

The queue for the Crown Room is the one indoor bottleneck in the castle. It runs along the exhibition corridor before the room itself, and it is shortest in the first half hour after opening and in the final hour before last entry.

The Stone of Destiny is not here any more

This is the fact most travel pages still get wrong, and one of the two encyclopaedia entries ranking for this castle today still places the Stone in the Crown Room. It is not there. The Stone of Destiny left Edinburgh Castle for Perth Museum in 2024, where it is displayed for free — although the museum limits numbers, so a free timed ticket has to be booked. Historic Environment Scotland's own highlights list for the castle names the Honours and does not mention the Stone at all.

If seeing it was your reason for the visit, plan Perth as a separate day and let the castle stand on the Honours, the chapel and the vaults instead.

The prison vaults, and the six-year-old

Under Crown Square, the vaults built in the 1430s to level the ground for the courtyard held pirates and then prisoners of war. The first were French privateers taken in 1758; later arrivals came from France, America, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Denmark and Poland, most of them sailors, many of them Americans captured in the War of Independence. The youngest recorded prisoner was six, taken at Trafalgar in 1805.

In 1811 forty-nine men escaped through a hole in the defences that is still visible, got down the rock, and were recaptured — all but one.

The winter table is the one people misread: the gate is open at 09:30 all year, but from October the last entry falls back to 16:00, which means an afternoon flight or a late lunch can quietly cost you the visit.

Things inside close before the castle does

The National War Museum opens at 09:45 and takes its last visitors at 17:30 in summer and 16:30 in winter. The Royal Scots and Royal Regiment of Scotland Museum shuts as early as 15:45 on winter weekdays and closes altogether from 21 December to 5 January. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Museum closes at 16:15 in winter and is shut on 1 and 2 January.

Food and shopping stop earlier still: the Redcoat Café serves 09:30 to 16:00 daily, the Tea Rooms in Crown Square 10:30 to 16:00, and the three shops close at 17:40 in summer and 16:40 in winter. A 16:00 entry in July is a real visit; a 16:00 entry in February is not possible at all.

When the castle is quiet, and when it is not

Our reading, not an official count: the calm windows are the first slot at 09:30, before the coach groups clear the Esplanade, and the last ninety minutes, once the 13:00 gun crowd has drifted off. The compressed hour around the gun is the single busiest moment of the castle's day, and Crown Square empties as it starts.

From May to October the Esplanade in front of the gate is a construction site for the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo stands, which runs 7 to 29 August 2026. The castle stays open throughout; what disappears is the accessible parking and the bike racks.

The castle also warns that adverse weather can close it at no notice and asks visitors to check ahead before a long journey. One visitor toilet block, on the left after the drawbridge, has been closed for refurbishment "until early September 2026", with temporary toilets by the ticket plaza — that was still the notice on 30 August 2026.

The gun fires at 13:00 every day except Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day. It is not a re-enactment: it began in 1861 as a time signal for ships in the Firth of Forth, after the businessman John Hewat brought the idea back from Paris, and it complemented the time ball on the Nelson Monument over on Calton Hill, which was useless in the sea fog Edinburgh calls a haar.

Stand at Mills Mount Battery, on the north face, just outside the Redcoat Café — through the Portcullis Gate and right, at the far end of the Argyle Battery. The original was a 64-pounder; since 2001 it has been a 105mm light field gun, and the report is louder than first-timers expect, which is half the pleasure. Sensory backpacks and ear defenders can be borrowed from the ticket office if the bang is a problem for someone in your group.

Going at 12:40 costs you the quietest half hour of the middle of the day. If your slot is in the morning, see Crown Square first and come down for the gun; if it is in the afternoon, you have already missed it and the Royal Mile below is the better use of one o'clock.

The route is a hill, not a museum floor

You cross the Esplanade first — 110 metres of smooth tarmac on a five-degree uphill gradient — then enter over a wooden-slatted bridge. Inside, the way up is a steep curved cobbled climb, and several areas are reached only by steps. Wet setts in October are slippery in smooth soles; this is a site for the shoes you would wear on a hill, not the ones you would wear to a gallery.

A mobility vehicle runs the climb and manual wheelchairs can be borrowed. Adapted toilets are on site. Visitors with disabilities pay the standard adult, concession or child rate with no proof of disability required, and up to two accompanying carers enter free per transaction — but the carer tickets have to be added when you book, so this is not something to sort out at the gate.

Bags: the rule that turns people away

Suitcases and rucksacks of 30 litres or more are not allowed in, and the castle stores nothing at all — no luggage, no prams, no pushchairs, no personal items. Bag searches happen at the entrance. If you are visiting between hotels, leave the case at your accommodation or at a Waverley locker before you climb; there is no cloakroom on the rock and nowhere on Castlehill to leave a case.

Assistance dogs are welcome, including in the roofed areas. Other dogs are not.

Deaf and autistic visitors, and the practicalities

British Sign Language tours are arranged in advance by emailing interpretation@hes.scot; if no Deaf guide is free on your date, there is a BSL itinerary to follow on your own. Visual stories for autistic visitors, written separately for adults and children, are published on the castle's access guide, and sensory backpacks and ear defenders are lent from the ticket office.

The audio guide costs £4 (about $5.40), runs in fourteen languages including Mandarin, Korean, Ukrainian and Brazilian Portuguese, and exists in large print and Open Dyslexic versions. It can be downloaded to your own phone — do that before you travel, because the castle warns that connectivity on the rock varies, and bring your own headphones. The paper orientation map is free at the gate.

From Waverley station the castle is a short walk and, in the castle's own words, "uphill all the way" — up Cockburn Street or the Waverley Steps to the Royal Mile, then left and up past the Lawnmarket. Allow fifteen to twenty minutes at a walking pace, more with a pushchair.

From the airport, trams run every seven minutes and reach Princes Street in about 30 minutes; the airport single is £7.90 (about $11). The Airlink 100 bus takes 25 minutes to Waverley Bridge at £6 (about $8), and services 17 and 18 now carry the ordinary city fare of £2.40 (about $3.30) to and from the airport, which is the cheapest scheduled link of the three. Fares and caps are set out on the getting around page.

Local buses that put you closest stop on the Mound or George IV Bridge — both leave a five-minute uphill walk. Hop-on hop-off tours stop by the castle too.

Driving, and why you probably should not

There is no public parking at Edinburgh Castle. The nearest car park is the Castle Terrace NCP, below the rock on the west side. A small number of accessible spaces sit on the Esplanade for ticket holders with accessibility requirements, first come or booked in advance — and from May to October they are largely taken by the Tattoo stands, along with the bike racks.

Which approach is worth the extra minutes

Coming up the Royal Mile from the east delivers you to the Esplanade with the whole street behind you and is the walk most people should take. The alternative, up Castle Wynd Steps from the Grassmarket in the Old Town, is shorter on the map and much steeper on the legs — a flight of stone steps, not a slope.

Book the first slot at 09:30, take Crown Square before the Honours queue forms, come down to Mills Mount for the gun at 13:00 and walk out of the gate into the rest of the day facing downhill. That single decision — castle first, everything else after — is what keeps the ridge from becoming two climbs.

From the Esplanade the Royal Mile runs east past St Giles' to Holyrood, where the Palace of Holyroodhouse closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for much of the year, so check before you commit an afternoon. Arthur's Seat is the walk that puts the castle back in the frame from the other side, and it is free at any hour. On a wet day the National Museum of Scotland is twelve minutes away and costs nothing.

Everything else with hours, prices and a map is indexed on things to do in Edinburgh, and every ticket on this site sits side by side on the tickets index. Several Edinburgh attractions raise their prices on 1 September 2026 as a temporary VAT reduction ends; Historic Environment Scotland has published no change for the castle, so the figures on this page are what it charged on 30 August 2026.