From The Best of Edinburgh, a Hidden Scotland guide

Unusual & Interesting Things in Edinburgh

Hidden carvings, curiosities and strange memorials around the city.

Words by Hidden Scotland

Printed in The Best of Edinburgh, a Hidden Scotland guidebook.

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Edinburgh is full of surprises. From hidden carvings to scientific curiosities and memorials with strange stories, this is a guide to the more unusual and unexpected corners of the city.

Wojtek the Soldier Bear Memorial

At first glance, Edinburgh presents itself in an orderly way—terraces, closes, monuments, galleries. But walk for long enough and the edges start to show. It’s not all sandstone and Enlightenment. Look closer and the oddities surface.

A plaque that reads “Heave awa’ chaps, I’m no’ dead yet.” A golden hawk nailed to a tenement wall. A Wild West town hidden behind a row of townhouses. Some are easy to miss, others almost too strange to believe. What they share is a sense that this city has never quite fit the mould.

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Next in The Best of EdinburghAn Introduction to EdinburghHistory hangs on Edinburgh like a cloak. Even on a gloomy day, Scotland’s national capital can feel like something from a gilt-edged storybook. It’s a city of taverns and tenements, of steep cobbled streets and ancient hills, of grand townhouses and age-old churches. The whole destination is at once real and unreal: tour guides patrol the pavements just as ghosts flitter in the shadows. That the whole urban scene is topped by a mighty, cliff-perched castle – complete with endless tales of its own – seems only fitting.Read on

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