“I have been made aware that Edinburgh is quite hilly.”

– Dick298, TripAdvisor

Edinburgh is perhaps the most vertical of any major UK city. It has ups. It has downs. And sometimes the transitions between the two can be surprising and difficult to parse. As we navigate from place to place we might find ourselves tackling elegant staircases, perilously steep streets, or unexpected bridges.

Cities are normally spaces that we navigate in two dimensions. Edinburgh requires that we introduce a third. The resultant confusion can sometimes be beautifully destabilising.

Here are some of the most prominent vertical shocks that Edinburgh provides.

The Scotsman Steps

These 104 steps connect Market Street (and Edinburgh’s main train station) with the bridge which soars above. They climb alongside what was once the headquarters of the Scotsman newspaper – indeed you can still see the windows where daily editions were sold to passing commuters.

Like many spaces in Edinburgh, the Scotsman Steps are neither inside nor outside, but something in-between. They are, however, an important byway. So vital, in fact, that Edinburgh Council treat them as a road, and maintain them accordingly. This staircase, then, is perhaps the only vertical road in the UK.

Tenement Buildings (Various)

For those unfamiliar with their internal layout, the tenements which populate many of Edinburgh’s residential streets can provide numerous moments of disorientation. Imagine: you enter from the street and are confronted by a stone staircase, the risers worn by generation upon generation of passing feet… yet the flats which you visit from this staircase are clean, modern, bright.

Furthermore, some are arranged like houses, with an upstairs and a down. After a day spent inside it is easy to forget that the street is not simply downstairs. That you are upstairs twice over, dizzyingly high above the ground.

Espionage

This unusually tall nightclub was a seedy mirror of the Scotsman Steps. Enter from the street, ascend seven flights of stairs and you would emerge, miraculously, still at street level. For anyone unaware of just how steep the centre of Edinburgh is, this was a powerful and confusing reminder.

While this trick was a pleasing one, it clearly wasn’t enough to sustain the nightclub, which shut its doors in 2019. It remains to be seen what will take its place.

The National Library of Scotland

When you enter the National Library of Scotland from street level on George IV Bridge, you are actually entering one of the upper floors of the building. Between you and the lowest floor of the building are at least 11 more storeys, many of which are closed to the public.

One of these closed floors opens onto a space known as “the void” – a small gap between the library building and the structure of the bridge which almost abuts it.

Reflect on this as you stand in the solid-seeming marble-clad entryway. The floor may feel solid and substantial, but there is a labyrinth below you. There are voids, archives, forgotten storerooms and more.

The Vaults

Access to the vaults beneath South Bridge is limited. You can get a glimpse of them by ducking into The Banshee Labyrinth – a pub which uses the ancient chambers to house a pool table and a small independent cinema. The coffin-shaped tables and permanent Halloween decorations make the gloomy subterranean space distinctly un-creepy.

The Labyrinth aside, a vaults tour is your only other option. Your guide will show you around the dripping chambers where hundreds of Edinburgh citizens once lived, worked, and died, before telling you, apparently in earnest, about the evil spirits which might now be trapped down there.

However hammy the tour, there is one significant thing to take from it. It will show you a dozen rooms. Beneath South Bridge there are hundreds. They sit, sealed and filled with rubble, utterly invisible to the people who pass above.

Indeed, to many of those people passing above, South Bridge doesn’t seem like a bridge at all.

Arthur’s Seat

From halfway up Arthur’s Seat, on a clear day, you can look directly across at the Castle which sits on a perfect level with you. One peak is covered in buildings, one is wild and rocky. Between the two Edinburgh can be reimagined as a crowded valley – a human settlement clinging to the gully between two peaks of a dormant volcano.

Climb a little further and you’ll rise above even the castle. Stand at the peak. Feel the wind tug at you. Watch the grass ripple with it. Contemplate that you are, even here, only a brisk 20-minute walk from the crowded, bustling centre of an undeniably modern city.