City of the Dead Tour Edinburgh: The Double Dead Tour

What Is in the Price

The verified inclusion is the local expert guide for the full 1 hour 45 minutes. Access to the South Bridge Vaults and to the Covenanter's Prison comes as part of the guided tour, and the operator says it holds the key to the prison, which the council keeps locked to protect the graves. That locked-graveyard access is the single biggest thing separating this listing from the others. The Edinburgh Haunted Underground Vaults and Graveyard Tour at $34 walks Greyfriars Kirkyard and enters the vaults, but the sealed prison section stays shut. The Friends of Greyfriars Kirkyard open the prison on set free special days, so a determined DIY visitor has a workaround, just not on demand.

There is no drink, no museum entry and no hotel pickup in the ticket, and transportation to and from the attractions is explicitly excluded.

What You Might Pay on the Day

Nothing on this tour is stated as an extra, and no mandatory extras are listed. Bring weatherproofs rather than money: the walk is on foot, and cancellation for bad weather is offered if conditions turn. Tipping is not mentioned in the listing either way, so treat it as your call rather than an expectation.

How the Listings Compare

Each row below comes from the operator's own listing, and anything the listing does not state is marked that way.

Meeting Point: the Tree Beside St Giles' Cathedral

You meet at the tree on the pavement at the side of St Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile, and the listing is emphatic that it is not the front. The operator says its map pin sits on the wrong side of the church and cannot be changed, so use the What3words location ///scare.filed.tender if you are unsure. The meeting description asks you to arrive 10 minutes before departure and the departure info asks for 15, so aim for the earlier of the two.

St Giles' itself was traditionally founded in 1124, and the Mercat Cross beside it dates in its present form from 1885, standing on ground where executions and public punishments once took place.

Underground: the South Bridge Vaults

One half of the walk takes you below South Bridge into the vaults. The bridge was completed in 1788 with 19 arches, and its roughly 120 vault chambers were meant for taverns, cobblers' workshops and merchant storage. That worked for only about 30 years, with businesses leaving as early as 1795.

Through the 1800s the rooms became slum housing for the poor, lit by fish oil lamps, with no running water or sunlight, and some rooms held more than 10 people. Illegal gambling taverns and an unlicensed whisky distillery operated down there. Written records from the slum years are almost non-existent, so most stories about who lived in the vaults are folklore rather than documented history.

The rooms were abandoned by the late 19th century and rediscovered in the 1980s, when an excavation in 1985 found evidence of habitation, and thousands of oyster shells, toys and medicine bottles were later cleared out by hand.

Above Ground: Greyfriars Kirkyard and the Covenanter's Prison

The other half is in Greyfriars Kirkyard, established in 1561-1562 on the grounds of a former Franciscan friary. After the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679 about 1,200 Covenanter prisoners were brought to Edinburgh and around 400 were held in a makeshift open enclosure south of the kirkyard. The area was later enclosed with vaulted tombs around 1700 and became known as the Covenanters' Prison. It has been sealed since around 1990 and can be entered only by arrangement with the kirk or on City of the Dead tours, which is the access your ticket buys.

The legend at the centre of this half is the Mackenzie Poltergeist, attached to the domed tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate nicknamed Bluidy Mackenzie for persecuting the Covenanters, who lived from 1636 to 1691. The story says a homeless man broke into the Black Mausoleum in the late 1990s and fell through the floor into a pit of plague bodies, and visitors have since reported bruises, scratches and cold spots. None of it is proven. The operator tells it as its own signature tale, and this page tells it as legend. The listing gives no finish point or return time, so check where the walk ends when you book.

Children Under 12

The minimum age is 12, with Viator listing adults 12 to 99 and children required to be accompanied by an adult. Younger children cannot join at all. Families with younger kids should look at the Afternoon Old Town and Underground Ghost Tour, which takes children from 5 on a 60 minute daytime walk through the closes and the South Bridge vaults for $21.53.

Travellers with Health or Mobility Limits

The listing says the tour suits all fitness levels but is not recommended for pregnant travelers, people with poor cardiovascular health or people with spinal injuries. No wheelchair access is stated at all. If you need a fully accessible option, the Edinburgh Dark History Tour at $24.23 is listed as wheelchair accessible, with all areas and surfaces and transport options named as accessible.

Non-English Speakers

Guiding is in English only, with no audio guides or translations mentioned. For a tour that runs in English, French or German, the Edinburgh Dark Secrets of the Old Town Ghost Walking Tour covers the Old Town alleyways, Old Calton Cemetery and Canongate Kirkyard for $26.

People Who Want Entry Inside Buildings

The listing names no building beyond the vaults and the prison. This is a walking tour and nothing on the Includes list adds a museum, a kirk interior or a drink. If you want a cellar at the end, the Edinburgh Underground Vaults Evening Ghost Tour with Whisky finishes in Megget's Cellar with a whisky, beer or soft drink for $41 over 2 hours.

What Is Free

Greyfriars Kirkyard is open to walk through, and the open part holds the Greyfriars Bobby grave and statue story, the Martyrs' Monument, two iron mortsafes against body snatchers, and the tombs of architect James Craig and poet Allan Ramsay. The Thomas Riddell grave, which may have inspired J. K. Rowling's character, is in the open part too, though visitors seeking it have caused erosion around the stone. Old Calton Burial Ground, with David Hume's tomb and Scotland's only statue of Abraham Lincoln, and Canongate Kirkyard, where Adam Smith is buried, can both be visited on your own. Entry to Greyfriars Kirk itself is free, with donations encouraged. The Greyfriars Kirkyard guide covers what you can see without paying anyone.

The vaults are a different matter. There is no walk-in entry to the South Bridge Vaults. The north side is used for ghost tours, the south side holds private event venues, and each operator claims its own patch, so the way underground is a paid tour. The Edinburgh Vaults guide explains who goes where.

What You Cannot Do Alone

The Covenanter's Prison is kept locked by the City of Edinburgh Council to protect the graves. It opens only for guided groups, by arrangement with the council bereavement team, or on the Friends of Greyfriars Kirkyard's set free open days, which need no booking but fall when they fall. According to Wikipedia, the Black Mausoleum inside that section can be visited only on night tours.

So the honest summary is this: a free day gives you the kirkyard, the stories on the information boards, and the other graveyards, and that is genuinely enough for many visitors. What the $34.99 adds is the vault rooms you cannot otherwise enter, the locked prison enclosure, and a guide who carries the Mackenzie legend and the Covenanter history in one connected telling. If you only want the vaults and not the graveyard, City of the Dead also sells a separate underground tour, and the Multi-Sensory Haunted Underground Vaults Tour gets you into the Blair Street vaults for $36.34.