Welcome to Hidden Scotland’s guide to Edinburgh

Introducing Hidden Scotland’s guide to Edinburgh, a city unlike any other. Scotland’s capital fits all manner of descriptions – time capsule, trendsetter, visitor magnet, festival heartland – but above all it simply is what it is: a place apart. Topped by a fortress and stuffed with big sights and mazy stories, it successfully straddles the last millennium and a half by somehow being both locked in the past and fixated on the future.

Half a million souls call the city home year-round, but many times that number descend on its streets at different points in the calendar. From the rainbow-feathered cornucopia of the summer Fringe to the massed merry-making of Hogmanay – not to mention a whole galaxy of other concerts, exhibitions, parades and parties – this is somewhere that routinely feels like the place to be.