Harry Potter in Edinburgh, the city where it was written, not where it was filmed.

If you arrive in Edinburgh looking for Harry Potter film sets, you will not find them: the films were shot in England, at Leavesden Studios. What is here is the city where J.K. Rowling lived from 1993 and wrote a good part of the books, and an Old Town of alleys, cemeteries and underground streets that looks a lot like what you imagined while reading. This day brings the two together on foot, without leaving a square kilometre, and ends with a dinner among candles and tapestries at the castle gate.

In the morning, what she wrote here

First of all, breakfast at The Elephant House, on George IV Bridge. Rowling wrote in its back room, with the castle and Greyfriars cemetery in the window. The café burned in 2021 and reopened in December 2025; it opens at 9:00 and takes no bookings, so first thing there will be a table.

At 11:00, two minutes away, The Potter Trail's Harry Potter walk sets off: a guide dressed as a wizard, wand included if you bring a pencil, for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. It is free, with a tip at the end, but you must book. It passes Greyfriars, where the grave of a Thomas Riddell who, so the story goes, may have given Voldemort his name, and ends on Victoria Street, the curving street of colourful façades that many see as Diagon Alley. The guide separates what has a source from what is legend, and that is the charm.

Lunch on your feet on Victoria Street

The walk drops you at the door of Oink, at 34 Victoria Street: a counter with a whole roast pig and rolls in three sizes, with haggis stuffing if you dare. It is takeaway. Eat it on the way down to the Grassmarket, the old market square at the foot of the castle rock.

In the afternoon, under the Royal Mile

Climb up West Bow to the Royal Mile. Halfway along, opposite St Giles' Cathedral, is the entrance to The Real Mary King's Close: a guide in period dress takes you down to 17th-century streets that were buried when the buildings above were raised. It lasts an hour, with 58 steps down, and under-5s are not admitted. Tickets are timed and start from £25; buy the 14:00 one or close to it.

When you come out, the Mercat Cross is next door: from there Mercat Tours sets off for the South Bridge vaults, the chambers under the arches of an 18th-century bridge where the city's poorest lived and worked. Another hour and a quarter underground, damper and darker than the first. If you want a fright, its ghost tours run in the afternoon and at night.

Dinner at the castle gate

You have time to go back to the hotel before dinner. The Witchery by the Castle is on Castlehill, the last stretch of the Royal Mile before the Esplanade: a dining room of dark wood, candles and tapestries that looks lifted from the Great Hall without trying. It admits ages 10 and over and groups of up to six, and you should book days ahead. If you want something simpler, The Abbotsford, in the New Town, is a pub dating from 1902 with Scottish cooking until 21:30.