46 Fun Facts About Edinburgh

Edinburgh's huge New Year street party goes by which Scots name?

Hogmanay, the Scots word for the last day of the year, drew more than 300,000 revellers to the city in 1996, which led the organisers to limit numbers and make the street party ticketed.

Edinburgh's nickname 'Auld Reekie' is Scots for what?

'Auld Reekie' means 'Old Smoky', after the chimney smoke that hung over the Old Town; in one old story a Fife laird sent his children to bed when he saw the city 'putting on her nightcap'.

For its neoclassical New Town and reputation for learning, Edinburgh has been called the 'Athens of' where?

The North: Calton Hill's National Monument was modelled on the Parthenon, but the money ran out in 1829 and it has stood unfinished ever since, earning the nickname 'Edinburgh's Disgrace'.

Which New Zealand city was named after the Gaelic form of Edinburgh's name?

Dunedin comes from Dùn Èideann, the Gaelic name for Edinburgh; its surveyor was told to copy the character of the Scottish capital, and the city is still nicknamed the Edinburgh of the South.

Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Bell was the real-life model for which fictional detective?

Sherlock Holmes: Bell would bring in out-patients he had never met and deduce their occupation and recent activities by observation alone, a method his student Arthur Conan Doyle gave to his detective.

What forced 17th-century Edinburgh to build tenements eleven storeys high?

Its defensive walls still marked the city's limits, so a growing population could only build upwards; the eleven-storey tenements that resulted have been called forerunners of the skyscraper.

The High Constables of Edinburgh, created by an act of 1611, are thought to be the world's oldest what?

Created by an act of 1611 to keep order in the crowded burgh, the High Constables of Edinburgh are thought to be the world's oldest statutory police force; they survive as a ceremonial body.

Which measure of 1707 closed the Scottish Parliament that had sat in Edinburgh?

The Acts of Union merged the Scottish and English parliaments into one Parliament of Great Britain at Westminster from 1 May 1707; Edinburgh went without a parliament until devolution in 1999.

Which Enlightenment thinkers were familiar figures on Edinburgh's streets in the 18th century?

Hume and Adam Smith both lived in the city; Smith, the great champion of free trade, spent his last twelve years there working as a commissioner of customs.

Edinburgh's Princes Street was to be called St Giles Street until which king objected to the name?

George III linked the name St Giles with a notorious London slum, so the planners dropped the city's patron saint and renamed the street to honour the king's own family instead.

In 2004 Edinburgh became the world's first UNESCO City of what?

Literature: UNESCO made Edinburgh its first City of Literature in 2004 after a pitch in Paris at which the city's poet laureate read a poem written for the occasion.

Which building is regarded as the oldest in Edinburgh, standing inside the castle?

St Margaret's Chapel, built about 1130 by Queen Margaret's son, was later used as a gunpowder store, and its origins lay forgotten until an antiquary rediscovered them in 1845.

Edinburgh Castle's One O'Clock Gun has been fired in anger only once, at what target in 1916?

A German Zeppelin raided the city on 2 April 1916 and the gun fired at it in vain; the daily shot began in 1861 so that ships could set their clocks even when fog hid the time ball on the Nelson Monument.

Which medieval siege gun, a gift to King James II, is displayed at Edinburgh Castle?

Mons Meg, made at Mons in what is now Belgium, could hurl a gunstone about two miles; after her barrel burst she spent 75 years in England before a triumphant return in 1829.

Which treasure left Westminster for Edinburgh Castle in 1996?

The Stone of Scone, used in coronations for centuries, was briefly taken back on Christmas Day 1950, when four Scottish students broke into Westminster Abbey; since 2024 it has been on show in Perth Museum.

What did the novelist Walter Scott find in a locked chest in Edinburgh Castle in 1818?

The crown jewels of Scotland were sealed away in 1707; Scott's party broke into the Crown Room half expecting an empty chest and found the crown, sceptre and sword still wrapped in linen.

Which street runs downhill from Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse?

The Royal Mile, almost exactly a mile long, follows a ridge of rock left in the lee of the castle crag by an Ice Age glacier, which is why the old closes fall away so steeply on either side.

Arthur's Seat, the peak of Holyrood Park, is the remains of what?

An extinct volcano: Arthur's Seat erupted in the Carboniferous, roughly 340 million years ago, and an Ice Age glacier later scraped it into the crags and sloping tail seen today.

In 1836 boys on Arthur's Seat found 17 miniature what, each holding a carved figure?

Coffins: nobody knows who hid them, though one theory ties the seventeen to the victims of the murderers Burke and Hare; the eight that survive are in the National Museum of Scotland.

Which famous reference work was first published in Edinburgh, from 1768?

Encyclopaedia Britannica began in Edinburgh in 1768, moved its publication to the United States in 1901, and printed its last paper edition in 2010 before going online only.

Which twin brothers, born in Edinburgh in 1962, had a worldwide hit with 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)'?

The Proclaimers, Craig and Charlie Reid, released the song in 1988, but it only reached the American top three five years later, after it featured in the film Benny & Joon.

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is staged each August at which location?

The Castle Esplanade was laid out as a parade ground in 1753, so massed pipes and drums suit it; a forerunner show played the Ross Bandstand in 1949 before the first Tattoo took the Esplanade in 1950.

Which Irvine Welsh novel, filmed in 1996, follows a group of heroin users in Edinburgh?

Trainspotting, Welsh's 1993 debut, is written largely in Scots; it was longlisted for the Booker Prize but reportedly kept off the shortlist after offending two of the judges.

What happened to Scott Monument architect George Meikle Kemp before it was finished?

He drowned in the Union Canal walking home in March 1844; Kemp, a self-taught joiner, had entered the design contest under the name of a medieval master mason, fearing his lack of qualifications would count against him.

Greyfriars Bobby, the terrier whose statue draws visitors in Edinburgh, reputedly spent 14 years doing what?

Guarding his master's grave: the terrier is said to have kept watch over John Gray's plot in Greyfriars Kirkyard until 1872, and in 1867 the Lord Provost paid for his licence and gave him a collar.

Which Edinburgh councillor, respectable by day and burglar by night, inspired Jekyll and Hyde?

Deacon Brodie, a cabinet-maker who copied his clients' keys in wax to rob them by night, was hanged in 1788; Stevenson, whose father owned furniture made by Brodie, turned the double life into Jekyll and Hyde.

Which author moved to Edinburgh in 1993 and wrote much of her first book in the city's coffee shops?

J. K. Rowling arrived as a single mother living on benefits and often wrote in cafés, including one part-owned by her brother-in-law; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997.

Which James Bond actor grew up in Edinburgh, where his first job was as a milkman?

Sean Connery was born in Fountainbridge in 1930 and delivered milk for St Cuthbert's Co-operative Society; three decades later he became the first big-screen Bond in Dr. No.

Edinburgh's two big football clubs are known locally as Hearts and what?

Hibs are Hibernian, founded in 1875 by Irishmen living in the Cowgate and named after Hibernia, the Roman name for Ireland; their meetings with Hearts make up the Edinburgh derby.

Which Edinburgh stadium, the largest in Scotland, is the home of Scottish rugby?

Murrayfield holds just over 67,000, more than any other stadium in Scotland; it opened on 21 March 1925 with a win over England that completed a Scottish Grand Slam.

Which form of public transport returned to Edinburgh's streets in 2014 after an absence of 58 years?

Trams came back on 31 May 2014 after delays and cost overruns so severe that a public inquiry followed; the city's old tramways had closed in November 1956.

Edinburgh's main railway station shares its name with which Walter Scott novel?

Waverley came out anonymously in 1814, and Scott signed his later books only as 'the author of Waverley'; the name passed to the whole series of novels and then to the station.

The Forth Bridge, opened in 1890 nine miles west of Edinburgh, is what type of bridge?

Cantilever: work had begun on a suspension bridge by Thomas Bouch, but when his Tay Bridge collapsed in 1879 confidence in him dried up, his design was abandoned and a far sturdier one was chosen.

Enric Miralles, the architect of the Scottish Parliament building, came from which Spanish city?

Barcelona: Miralles gave the building roofs said to recall upturned boats on a shore, but he died in July 2000 with the project unfinished, four years before it opened.

First estimated at up to £40 million, the Scottish Parliament Building finally cost roughly how much?

About £414 million, at least ten times the first estimates, for a building that opened in 2004 more than three years late; a public inquiry under Lord Fraser followed.

Which decommissioned vessel is permanently berthed at Edinburgh's Ocean Terminal as a visitor attraction?

The Royal Yacht Britannia carried the royal family more than a million nautical miles in 43 years; the clocks on board are stopped at 3:01, the time the Queen last stepped ashore in 1997.

Which famous animal's stuffed body is displayed in the National Museum of Scotland?

Dolly the sheep, cloned from an adult cell at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in 1996, was named after Dolly Parton because the cell used came from a mammary gland.

Edinburgh is traditionally said to be built on how many hills?

Seven, in a nod to the seven hills of Rome: Calton, Corstorphine, Craiglockhart, Braid, Blackford, Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock, which runners link in a race of more than 14 miles.

The persistent coastal fog that easterly winds bring to Edinburgh is called what?

Haar forms when warm, moist air passes over the cold North Sea and condenses; easterly winds and sea breezes then carry the fog ashore, most often between April and September.

Which river flows from the Pentland Hills through Dean Village to Edinburgh's docks?

The Water of Leith cuts a deep gorge at Dean Village, where its current once drove a cluster of watermills; Thomas Telford's Dean Bridge strides across the ravine.

Which body founded the University of Edinburgh in the 1580s?

The town council opened it in 1583 as the 'Tounis College', the Town's College; a university set up by secular authorities was unprecedented in Scotland, where the three older ones were all founded by papal bull.

Whose army occupied Edinburgh in 1650 after routing the Scots at Dunbar?

Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army invaded because the Scots had backed Charles II as king, and its victory at Dunbar on 3 September 1650 left Edinburgh open to occupation.

Which force briefly occupied Edinburgh in 1745 before marching into England?

Charles Edward Stuart's Jacobite Highland Army entered Edinburgh unopposed on 17 September 1745, yet the castle above the town never fell and stayed in government hands throughout.

Whose secretary, David Rizzio, was stabbed to death at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in 1566?

Mary, Queen of Scots, was dining with Rizzio when her jealous husband Lord Darnley and a band of nobles burst in; she was held at gunpoint while Rizzio was dragged out and stabbed dozens of times.

What kind of animal is Sir Nils Olav, the Edinburgh Zoo resident who holds a general's rank in the Norwegian army?

A penguin: Norway's King's Guard adopted a king penguin at the zoo in 1972 and promoted him on every visit; his successors have since been knighted and raised to major general.

Which animals, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, lived at Edinburgh Zoo from 2011 until they went home in 2023?

Giant pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang, 'Sweetie' and 'Sunshine', were leased from China for about $1 million a year; the ten-year loan was extended before the pair left in December 2023.