Edinburgh Underground Vaults Tour

Underground City Tours: dark history of Edinburgh's South Bridge

Visit the Edinburgh Underground Vaults, a network of tunnels and chambers hidden under Edinburgh's South Bridge with a very dark history. Book tickets and walking tours of the underground city.

The underground city for work and living

In 1788, the South Bridge opened in Edinburgh. The road bridge led from High Street to Chambers Street and is made up of no fewer than nineteen enormous arches (tunnels). Only the largest arch at Cowgate can be seen; the rest of the arches are completely enclosed by the surrounding buildings. The famous Edinburgh Vaults or South Bridge Vaults are formed in these arches.

The Edinburgh Vaults

The Vaults are actually rooms in the nineteen arches that make up the South Bridge. For the first thirty years after the bridge opened in 1788, the rooms were used to house taverns, workshops and storerooms for the town's merchants. Later on, the Vaults were mainly used as living quarters for vagrants and as illegal gambling places, illegal whisky distilleries, illegal prostitution and even, if you have to debunk the myths believe, as a corpse storehouse. From 1990, the partly flooded Vaults have been evacuated by the Rowans. Today, the northern Vaults have partially reopened to the public Ghost Tours. The Southern Vaults of Edinburgh are now even hosting events, weddings, dinners and parties.

Ghost Tour

After the television program Ghost Adventures reported coming into contact with several ghosts in the Underground Vaults and after the program Joe Swash believes in Ghosts also showed recordings of ghost voices in the Edinburgh Vaults, the Vaults were closed to the public in 2015. Only during this official tour you can still visit the Vaults. At the Underground tour you will learn more about the Underground Vaults in an hour. Hear the gritty and criminal tales of Edinburgh's past and try not to get too scared.

Where are the Edinburgh Underground Vaults?