Hotels near Blair Street Underground Vaults

South Bridge was begun on 1 August 1785, opened to foot traffic on 19 November 1786 and completed in 1788. It has nineteen arches and you can see exactly one of them, because tenements were built flush against both sides. The chambers inside those arches, roughly 120 of them ranging from two to forty square metres, were let as workshops and storage. They started emptying as early as 1795 and the businesses had gone by the 1820s. The vaults stayed sealed until the 1980s, when Norrie Rowan, a former Scotland rugby internationalist, found a tunnel into them; he and his son cleared hundreds of tonnes of rubble by hand.

Mercat Tours holds exclusive access to the Blair Street section. Its year-round Haunted Underground tour runs daily from £27 adult, £21 child and £24 concession, lasting 60 to 75 minutes. For 2026 the operator adds a dedicated Halloween Underground tour running Friday 23 October to Saturday 31 October, about an hour long, opening at the Mercat Cross on the High Street with the folklore of Samhuinn itself before the descent.

The overlap with The Real Mary King's Close is real, so be deliberate. If you can only afford one underground hour, they are not interchangeable: the Close is a preserved street with furniture and rooms, the vaults are unlit brick chambers with almost nothing in them, which is either the point or the disappointment depending on what you came for. Children over 5 are admitted, though the Halloween edition leans harder into ghost material than the standard tour.

Pro Tip: On 31 October take an afternoon departure, not an evening one. The tour finishes near Hunter's Square, a 15-minute walk from the Calton Hill gates, and Samhuinn gates opened at 18:30 in 2025 with last entry at 21:00. A start after 17:00 puts you underground at precisely the hour you should be climbing the hill.