Real Mary King's Close

Mary King's Close is a narrow and eerily well-preserved, Old Town close that was sealed off and built over, in 1753, on the site of Edinburgh City Chambers.

The Close was re-opened to the public in April 2003, and today commercial tour group The Real Mary King's Close take visitors on trips through the vaults, with its small houses and spaces, regaling them with ghost stories, character re-enactments, and tales of life in Edinburgh between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Recent research found that Mary King's Close consists of a number of underground Closes which would have originally been very narrow walkways with houses on either side stretching up to 7 storeys high.