The Tower on Portobello Beach

The seaside suburb of Portobello does a remarkable job of slipping under the radar. While central Edinburgh is frequently awash with visitors, the city’s quirky beachside quarter – just three miles east of the Old Town – moves along at its own, village-like pace. This is something of a wonder. With its long sands, café-dotted promenade and Georgian terraces, “Porty” has history, character and more than a dash of old-world good looks, all of which are also true of its extraordinary events space: The Tower Portobello.

Gazing over the beach since 1785, this crenellated Gothic tower was originally built as an eye-catching summerhouse for a wealthy local lawyer. Stride forward more than 240 years and the venue has now evolved into a unique events and filming location, hosting everything from chef takeovers to Bollywood shoots. This is emphatically no everyday function space. Its architecture is unconventional in all the right ways, having been constructed using salvaged pieces of masonry from elsewhere in the city (owner and creative director Zahra Noble-Sabokbar describes it as “a building made of other buildings”), while its more recent past is a story unto itself.

It’s a tale that has Zahra and her family at its heart. In the early 1980s, her parents purchased the amusement pavilion directly in front of the tower; Zahra’s very first job was selling candy floss and buckets and spades to passers-by. Back then, the tower wasn’t just unoccupied but had slipped into such a crumbling state of disrepair that it was viewed mainly as a suitably eerie source of ghost stories. The old ruin – which in its early 20th-century heyday had been bought by renowned magician Harry Marvello, who built a variety hall to go alongside it – was seen as so valueless that it had been included as part of the shop sale.

The family soon recognised, however, that they were sitting on somewhere brimming with potential. Dreams of restoring the Tower to its former glories came quickly; progress, on the other hand, came slowly. Rushing was never part of the plan. Decades of gradual, painstaking restoration followed: laying down building foundations, fitting plumbing and electricity, scouring salvage yards for the right chairs, the right doors, the right stonework. Eventually, the historical beachside venue was ready to rise again. In January 2025 – following tireless work from the whole family – the Tower Portobello reopened its doors, a phoenix on the Firth of Forth.

To visit it today, wandering from floor to floor and reflecting on its origins, is remarkable. The dilapidated shell of times gone by has been replaced by somewhere meticulously restored both inside and out. It’s been transformed into a place of stylish furnishings, elegant textures, rejuvenated brickwork and countless period details, a venue with stunning Scottish interiors and a two-mile-long beach on its doorstep. This last point is key to its charm – the shifting light of the outside sands and the warm palettes of the inside spaces combine to create somewhere truly special.

“Every decision was made carefully,” says Zahra of the Tower’s restoration. “Nothing was forced. If something wasn't right, we waited until it was. To now be able to open it up and show it off — to have people walk in and feel what it is — I'm just incredibly proud. Of my parents, of the building, of everything that went into it.”

Having Zahra at the helm doesn’t just give the Tower a direct link to its past. She also brings copious experience in styling and design, having spent years working with VIP clients and big-name brands in both London and Amsterdam. It comes as no surprise, then, that the Tower’s redesign has already brought in all manner of high-end projects and events, from brand takeovers, luxury weddings and supper clubs to private celebrations, film shoots and fashion trunk shows. Plans for creative takeovers for the duration of the Edinburgh Fringe are also well underway.

At Hidden Scotland, we took precious little time to fall under the venue’s spell. From the moment we set foot in the serene courtyard – a vivid contrast to the bustling prom outside – we knew we’d found a one-of-a-kind spot. It’s why, when we needed a location in which to take lifestyle shots of our recent Issue 12, the tower felt like the ideal choice. Fresh flowers had been placed in all the rooms, artisan bread and local vegetables were laid out in the gorgeous green-hued kitchen, and natural daylight flooded through the windows.

The results of our shoot, captured by photographer Conor Gault, perfectly set the tone for the issue’s spring/summer publication. After all the hard work that had gone into the magazine – the research, the writing, the design, the curation, the editing – being able to bring it all together on a shoot like this, in a beautiful Edinburgh venue with an extraordinary story to tell, was a joy.