Edinburgh Old Town

Stone closes drop away from the Royal Mile like fault lines, plunging into shadow where the air still smells of damp rock and centuries of coal smoke. The Old Town stacks itself vertically — tenements a dozen storeys tall once climbed this volcanic spine, and every alley is a shortcut through five hundred years of Scottish history. The city hums with footsteps overhead and fiddle music leaking from basement bars.

Edinburgh's Old Town rides the tail of an extinct volcano, its medieval street plan little altered since the 1300s, and together with the Georgian New Town it is inscribed by UNESCO. The closes — narrow passages dropping from the Royal Mile towards the Cowgate — once held the entire city, rich and poor sharing the same towering stairs, and it was from these alleys that Burke and Hare sold sixteen bodies to the anatomists in 1828. The castle at one end and the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the other bookend a single mile that takes in St Giles' Cathedral, buried vaults, hidden courts and the city's oldest surviving building, St Margaret's Chapel, raised around 1130. The city's festival tradition runs deep — the Fringe grew here into the largest arts festival on Earth, written into its courtyards and cellars — and winter answers with short days, candlelight and Hogmanay.