# Edinburgh Castle audio guide, five stops, free.

A fortress on a volcanic plug some 350 million years old, 130 metres above the sea and besieged twenty-six times: hear five of its places on this page, then aim Chiaro's camera at everything else on the rock.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Edinburgh Castle. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/

Start your Edinburgh Castle audio guide at the foot of the slope, out on the Esplanade, before anyone asks for a ticket: the opening stop needs only a clear look at the gate. Tickets are scanned at the Portcullis Gate, where the second stop turns you north along the Argyle Battery to the One o'Clock Gun. From there a cobbled road climbs roughly 350 metres, steepest at Foog's Gate, to Crown Square and the Great Hall on its south side; the Half Moon Battery at the east end of the Upper Ward looks back down the ridge you came up; and the walk finishes on the summit, at St Margaret's Chapel and Mons Meg, close to the stone steps that take visitors out. About ten minutes of listening, entirely self-guided, inside the two hours the castle itself tells you to allow.

Hours, prices and the route through the gates were read from Historic Environment Scotland's own site, edinburghcastle.scot, on 26 September 2026 and stored together with the official wording behind each; the history is matched against a second, independent reference. The castle moves its hours with the seasons and can close at short notice in bad weather, so its website has the final word on any given day. Where a steward on the rock tells you something different from this page, take the steward's word, and tell us what changed.

## The stops

### 1. The Esplanade and the Gatehouse

Esplanade laid out as a parade ground in 1753; Gatehouse designed by R Lawson Scott of the Royal Engineers Department, 1886–1888, its niches by Sir Robert Lorimer (1864–1929); statues of Robert the Bruce by Thomas Clapperton and William Wallace by Alexander Carrick (1882–1966) added in 1929 · Esplanade 1753, extended 1845; dry ditch 1742; Gatehouse 1888; statues 1929 · Tarmac forecourt 110 metres long on a 5-degree slope, rising to the Gatehouse and its ditch; Castle Rock, a dolerite volcanic plug, its summit 130 metres above sea level · The Esplanade, outside the castle gate, looking west at the Gatehouse with the Half Moon Battery above it and the Royal Palace to its left

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/en/esplanade-and-gatehouse.mp3?v=892176 (112 s)

Look for:
- The two statues in the niches either side of the gate: Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, put there in 1929, forty-one years after the Gatehouse itself was built.
- The motto carved over the arch, Nemo me impune lacessit: no one attacks me with impunity.
- The great curved wall rising behind the Gatehouse. That is the Half Moon Battery, and the tall block to its left is the Royal Palace.
- The drop on either side of the Esplanade. Cliffs guard the rock on the north, south and west, which leaves this eastern slope as the only readily accessible way up.

Everything about this castle starts with the slope under your feet. You are standing on the only easy way up. The rock in front of you is the plug of a volcano that rose about 350 million years ago, and on the north, the south and the west its cliffs drop eighty metres to the ground below. The hard dolerite shrugged off the glaciers and sheltered the softer rock behind it, which is why the Old Town runs down from here in one long tail to the east. The only easy way in is up this ridge, towards you, and so every gate you are about to pass through faces this way.

The open ground itself is younger than it looks. It was laid out as a parade ground in 1753 and lengthened in 1845. Before that, this was the Spur, an angled earth bastion of 1548 and one of the earliest of its Italian kind in Britain. And in the spring of 1573 this end of the ridge was a gun position. During the Lang Siege, English troops built batteries on Castle Hill, directly facing the east walls, and from the seventeenth of May they fired around three thousand shots at the castle in twelve days. Hold on to that. At the fourth stop you will stand on what was built over the damage.

Now look straight ahead at the Gatehouse. It is the newest stonework in front of you, added in 1888 as ornament rather than defence. The two statues in its niches came later still, in 1929: Robert the Bruce by Thomas Clapperton, and William Wallace by Alexander Carrick. Over the arch runs the motto Nemo me impune lacessit, no one attacks me with impunity, which is fair enough for a place that a study in 2014 found had been besieged twenty-six times in eleven hundred years. The dry ditch in front of the gate took its present shape in 1742.

Above and behind the Gatehouse rises the great curved wall of the Half Moon Battery, and to its left the tall block of the Royal Palace. That front, battery and palace together, is the face the castle has shown the town since the 1580s.

One thing to remember as you walk through. Inside the Gatehouse tunnel is an old stone relief of a gun carriage. When you reach the summit, you will meet the great gun whose carriage was copied from it.

### 2. The Portcullis Gate and the Argyle Battery

Gate begun by the Regent Morton after the Lang Siege, upper parts completed by William Schaw in 1584; rebuilt above as the Argyle Tower by Hippolyte Blanc (1844–1917), paid for by William Nelson; the Argyle Battery designed by Captain John Romer and built by William Adam · Gate from the 1570s, upper parts 1584; Argyle Tower 1886–1887; Argyle Battery 1720s–1730s; One o'Clock Gun first fired 1861 · Rubble and ashlar gatehouse under a Scots baronial tower; the battery a gun platform on the north face, where the One o'Clock Gun is now a 105 mm field gun · Through the Portcullis Gate, where tickets are scanned, and out onto the Argyle Battery on the right, facing north over Princes Street; the One o'Clock Gun is at the far end of the battery beside the Redcoat Café

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/en/portcullis-gate-and-argyle-battery.mp3?v=974514 (122 s)

Look for:
- The two layers of the gate: plain sixteenth-century rubble around the arch, and above it Hippolyte Blanc's tower of the 1880s with its corbelled parapet and rounded corner turret.
- The line of guns along the Argyle Battery, pointing north over Princes Street and the New Town.
- The One o'Clock Gun at the far end of the battery, on Mills Mount beside the Redcoat Café.
- The Nelson Monument on Calton Hill, off to the north-east, which carried the Time Ball the gun was brought in to back up.

Stop just inside the gate and turn round to look at what you have walked through, because the Portcullis Gate is two buildings stacked on top of each other.

The lower half, the rough rubble around the arch, is the Regent Morton's work, begun after the Lang Siege. It replaced the Constable's Tower, a round tower built on this spot in the thirteen-seventies. On the twenty-third of May 1573, under the English guns you heard about on the Esplanade, that tower came down, and its rubble blocked the entrance to the castle. The upper parts of the new gate were finished by William Schaw in 1584.

The top half belongs to another century. In 1886 and 1887 the Edinburgh architect Hippolyte Blanc replaced the plain upper storey with the Scots baronial tower you see now, all turret and corbelled parapet, paid for by the Edinburgh publisher William Nelson. It has been described as restoration in an extreme form. It is called the Argyle Tower after the ninth Earl of Argyll, held here before his execution in 1685. It was not his first stay: years earlier he had escaped from this castle dressed as his sister's footman.

Now turn to face north and walk out onto the Argyle Battery. This side of the castle is eighteenth century. In 1728 General Wade reported the defences decayed and inadequate, and through the seventeen-twenties and thirties the military engineer Captain John Romer designed, and the architect William Adam built, a new line of batteries along the north and west faces. Six guns defend this one, and in front of them is the open outlook to the north: Princes Street straight below, the New Town beyond it, and the Firth of Forth on the horizon.

At the far end, on Mills Mount, is the One o'Clock Gun. The idea came from Paris in 1861, brought home by the businessman John Hewat, so that ships in the Firth could set their clocks. It backed up the Time Ball on the Nelson Monument, the tall tower you can pick out on Calton Hill to your right, which was useless in fog. Sound is slow, so in 1861 someone printed a map showing when the bang would actually reach each part of Edinburgh. The gun has been fired in anger once, on the second of April 1916, at a German Zeppelin, and missed. Since 2001 it has been a 105 millimetre field gun, and the sound still makes people jump on Princes Street below.

### 3. The Great Hall, on Crown Square

Built for King James IV; restored by Hippolyte Blanc (1844–1917) in works begun in the 1880s and funded by William Nelson · Completed 1511; barracks from 1650, later a military hospital; restored by Hippolyte Blanc · Sandstone hall with a timber hammerbeam roof on carved stone corbels, 29 by 12.5 metres · Crown Square, the south side, in what the castle calls its very heart; the Royal Palace is on the east side of the square and the Scottish National War Memorial on the north

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/en/great-hall.mp3?v=1082766 (135 s)

Look for:
- The roof: giant timber beams resting on carved stone corbels, one of only two original medieval hammerbeam roofs in Scotland.
- The carved stones under the beams: heads, and symbols such as the thistle, with Renaissance detail compared to work at Blois in France.
- Out in the square, the gilded initials MAH over the Royal Palace door, for Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley.
- The Scottish National War Memorial across the square to the north, a barrack block turned into a shrine in 1927.

You are on the top level of the castle, and Crown Square is the reason it is level at all. The rock underneath is uneven, so in the fourteen-thirties the builders raised a platform of great stone vaults and laid the square out on top of them. Four buildings close it in: the Royal Palace on the east side, the Scottish National War Memorial on the north, the Queen Anne Building on the west, and here on the south, the Great Hall.

Before you go in, a word about the other three. In the palace, on the nineteenth of June 1566, Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James the Sixth, king of Scotland at thirteen months old and of England too from 1603. Look for the gilded initials MAH above its door: Mary, and her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. On the first floor is the Crown Room, which holds the Honours of Scotland, the oldest royal regalia in Britain. The crown was made for James the Fifth, who first wore it in 1540. The Honours were hidden from Cromwell's army from 1651 to 1660, locked in a chest after the Union of 1707, and only rediscovered by Sir Walter Scott in 1818. The war memorial across the square was the North Barracks until Sir Robert Lorimer turned it into a shrine, opened in 1927, for a country where one in five of those who enlisted in the First World War never came home. Inside it, the highest point of the Castle Rock breaks through the floor.

Now go into the hall and look up, because the roof is the point. James the Fourth finished the hall in 1511. Giant timber beams rest on stones carved with heads and with symbols like the thistle, and that carving has Renaissance detail that has been compared to work at Blois, in France, of about 1515. This is one of only two medieval halls in Scotland with an original hammerbeam roof. The floor beneath it measures twenty-nine metres by twelve and a half.

James hardly used it. Two years after it was finished he was killed at Flodden, fighting the army of his brother-in-law, Henry the Eighth. When Cromwell's troops took the castle in 1650 they made the hall a barracks, and in 1737 it was floored into three storeys to sleep 312 soldiers. Later it was a military hospital. Hippolyte Blanc, the architect of the Argyle Tower you passed below, restored it to what the nineteenth century believed a medieval hall should look like.

One story you can let go of: there is no evidence that the Parliament of Scotland ever met in here. Charles the First did feast in this hall in 1633, and slept in the palace next door on the seventeenth of June, the night before his Scottish coronation. No reigning monarch has stayed in the castle since.

### 4. The Half Moon Battery

Built under the Regent Morton, partly supervised by the master of work William MacDowall, over the ruins of David II's tower · 1573–1588, over David's Tower, begun 1367–1368; the tower rediscovered in 1912 · Curved stone artillery battery enclosing David's Tower, an L-plan tower whose main block measured 16 by 12 metres and stood 18 metres high, its remains still up to 15 metres from the rock · The eastern side of the castle, overlooking the main entrance and the Esplanade, at the east end of the Upper Ward beside the Royal Palace

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/en/half-moon-battery.mp3?v=939615 (117 s)

Look for:
- The view east along the ridge: the Esplanade directly below, the Old Town beyond it, Calton Hill, the flank of Arthur's Seat and the Firth of Forth.
- The guns along the parapet, 18-pounders made in 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars.
- The Esplanade straight below you. The Lang Siege batteries stood on Castle Hill, just beyond it, aimed at this side of the castle.

This is the one place in the castle where you can look straight back down the way you came. Below you is the Esplanade, where this walk began, and beyond it the Old Town running east along its ridge, with Calton Hill, the long flank of Arthur's Seat and the Firth of Forth behind. In May 1573 English guns stood down there on Castle Hill, aimed at the tower that used to stand exactly where you are.

Because this battery is a lid. Under it are the remains of David's Tower, begun in 1367 or 1368 by David the Second, who died in the castle in 1371 before it was finished. It was built on an L-plan, its main block sixteen metres by twelve and eighteen metres high, and some of the castle's darkest stories happened inside it. In November 1440 the sixteen-year-old Earl of Douglas and his younger brother were summoned here, fed at what became known as the Black Dinner, and executed in front of the ten-year-old King James the Second. In 1479 the Duke of Albany, locked in the tower for plotting against his brother, James the Third, got his guards drunk and let himself down from a window on a rope.

Then came the Lang Siege. Kirkcaldy of Grange was holding the castle for Mary Queen of Scots, and on the twenty-second of May 1573, under the English bombardment, the south wall of David's Tower collapsed. Within a week Grange had surrendered, and on the third of August he was hanged at the Cross in Edinburgh.

The Regent Morton built this battery over the wreckage between 1573 and 1588. Historians are unkind about it: huge, impressive to look at, and already an ineffective and outdated artillery work. What it did do was bury the old tower and push the palace forward as the castle's face, which may well have been the point. The tower itself was forgotten until routine maintenance work in 1912 found it again, its outer wall still scarred by the shot of 1573. Its remains stand up to fifteen metres from the rock.

The tower had one more secret to keep. During the Second World War the Crown of Scotland was hidden inside it, buried in a medieval latrine.

The guns along the parapet in front of you are 18-pounders made in 1810, during the Napoleonic Wars. And the castle's first time gun was fired from this battery, before the One o'Clock Gun moved round to Mills Mount on the north side.

### 5. St Margaret's Chapel and Mons Meg

Chapel built for King David I and restored in 1851–1852; windows by Douglas Strachan (1875–1950). Mons Meg made for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and given to King James II · Chapel about 1130; windows 1922. Mons Meg 1449, given to James II in 1457, back at the castle since 1829 · Rubble stone chapel with walls 61 cm thick, a nave 4.87 metres long and 3 metres wide inside, and a round chancel arch 1.52 metres wide; Mons Meg a wrought-iron bombard of about six tonnes that fired 150 kg gunstones · The summit of the rock in the Upper Ward: through Foog's Gate, the chapel is on the left beyond the Whisky and Finest Food Shop, and Mons Meg sits outside it

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/edinburgh-castle/en/st-margarets-chapel-and-mons-meg.mp3?v=1095305 (137 s)

Look for:
- The chancel arch inside the chapel: round, Romanesque, carved with chevron zigzags, and original.
- Douglas Strachan's 1922 window of Saint Margaret, crowned and holding a book, with her name on a scroll below.
- The iron hoops and long staves that make up Mons Meg's barrel, and the great stone balls beside her.
- The small Dogs' Cemetery on the ledge below the Mons Meg terrace, where soldiers buried their regimental mascots.

You are at the summit of the rock, and the small plain building beside you is the oldest in Edinburgh. King David the First built it around 1130 and named it for his mother, Margaret, the queen who died in this castle in 1093 and was made a saint by Pope Innocent the Fourth in 1250. It is tiny. Inside, the nave is under five metres long and three metres wide, and the walls are sixty-one centimetres thick.

Go in and look at the arch between the nave and the sanctuary. It is round, Romanesque, carved with chevron zigzags, and it is original. Almost everything else here has been lost and found again. On the night of the fourteenth of March 1314 the castle was taken for Robert the Bruce, who had every building on the rock destroyed except this one, and on his deathbed in 1329 he set money aside for its repair. From the sixteenth century it was a gunpowder store, and its origins were forgotten so completely that it had to be rediscovered, in 1845, by the antiquary Sir Daniel Wilson, who found it serving as a storeroom at the end of a garrison chapel. It was restored in 1851 and 1852 with Queen Victoria's support.

The windows are the newest thing in it: five of them, made in 1922 by Douglas Strachan, showing Saint Margaret, Saint Andrew, Saint Columba, Saint Ninian and William Wallace. Find Margaret, crowned, holding a book, her name on a scroll beneath her. There are always fresh flowers, because the chapel guild keeps them coming, and every member of that guild shares the saint's name.

Now step outside to the great gun on the terrace. This is Mons Meg, named after the town of Mons, in present-day Belgium, where she was made, and given to King James the Second in 1457. She weighs about six tonnes and threw stone balls of 150 kilograms as far as 3.2 kilometres. Look at the barrel and you can see how it was made: long iron staves, bound with iron hoops. In 1460 she was dragged eighty kilometres to the siege of Roxburgh Castle, never more than five kilometres a day even behind a team of oxen, and James was killed at that siege when another of his cannons exploded. In 1558, to celebrate the wedding of Mary Queen of Scots, she fired a ball that came down in what is now the Royal Botanic Garden. Her barrel burst in 1681, she spent seventy-five years in England, and in 1829 she came home from Leith Docks with a cavalry and infantry escort.

Her carriage is the one you were asked to remember at the Gatehouse: it copies the stone relief in that tunnel. Before you start down, look over the wall below this terrace for a tiny cemetery, where the soldiers buried their regimental dogs.

## Before you go

Edinburgh Castle, The Esplanade, Edinburgh EH1 2NG, at the top of the Royal Mile. Walk up Castlehill onto the Esplanade, 110 metres of open tarmac rising gently to the Gatehouse; the first stop is played out there, and tickets are scanned further in, at the Portcullis Gate.

Waverley, the main railway station, is a short walk away but uphill all the way; Haymarket station lies west of Princes Street. Local buses running via the Mound or George IV Bridge stop nearby. From the airport the tram reaches Princes Street in about 30 minutes, and the Airlink 100 express bus reaches Waverley Bridge in 25. The castle has no public parking, and the closest car park is Castle Terrace NCP.

- Book online, and early. The castle says tickets often sell out far in advance, especially in summer, and once they are gone online there are none at the gate. Standard online tickets are sold for an entry time, while the dearer flexi ticket skips that and lets you come on any day within a week. Online is cheaper too: an adult ticket is £23.50 online against £26.00 on the day. Buy on edinburghcastle.scot, because the castle warns of lookalike sites selling fake tickets.
- Through the summer season, from the first of April to the end of September, the gates stay open 9.30am till 6pm, with the final visitors going in at 5pm. In the winter half of the year closing moves to 5pm and last admission to 4pm, with an earlier close on 24 December and an 11am start on 1 January. The castle is shut on 25 and 26 December and can close in adverse weather.
- The One o'Clock Gun fires every day except Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day, from beside the Redcoat Café at the far end of the Argyle Battery. It is loud and sudden, and the mobility vehicle that runs visitors up to Crown Square pauses from 12.15pm to 1.15pm because of it.
- The castle turns away suitcases and any rucksack of 30 litres or more, and has no left-luggage. From May to October the Tattoo's stadium is built on the Esplanade, which is still where the first stop starts.

Official tickets: https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/plan-your-visit/tickets/

Historic Environment Scotland's own audio guide costs £4.00 and is voiced by, among others, Saoirse Ronan and Bill Paterson. Hire a handset at the audio booth just past the Portcullis Gate, or buy the download with your ticket and play it on your phone, in which case the castle advises downloading before you travel because the signal up on the rock varies. Blind and partially sighted visitors get it free, and Historic Scotland members and Explorer Pass holders get 20% off. The 30-minute Official Guided Tour is a separate £6.50 on top of admission, pre-booked and in English only. Chiaro's five stops are a free alternative that runs in the browser, and the full text of each stop sits below its play button, which helps when the One o'Clock Gun goes off mid-sentence.

Official site: https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/

## Questions

**Is there a free Edinburgh Castle audio guide?**

Yes: the five stops here cost nothing and play in any phone browser, from the Esplanade outside the gate to Mons Meg on the summit. The castle's own audio guide is a paid extra at £4.00, though blind and partially sighted visitors get it free. For anything between the stops, take a photo in the Chiaro app and let it tell you the story.

**Can I listen to the Edinburgh Castle audio guide without a ticket?**

For the opening stop, yes. You hear it on the Esplanade, before the gate, where nobody checks anything. Tickets are scanned at the Portcullis Gate, and the other four stops, the Argyle Battery, the Great Hall, the Half Moon Battery and St Margaret's Chapel with Mons Meg, are all inside on a standard ticket, with nothing extra to book.

**How much is the official Edinburgh Castle audio guide?**

£4.00, with 20% off for Historic Scotland members and Explorer Pass holders, and free for blind and partially sighted visitors. You can hire a handset at the booth just past the Portcullis Gate or buy it as a download with your ticket. The 30-minute Official Guided Tour is separate; it costs £6.50 a head over and above admission, is booked ahead and given in English only.

**When is Edinburgh Castle closed?**

On 25 and 26 December. It also closes early on 24 December, opens late on 1 January, and can shut at short notice in adverse weather, so the castle suggests checking ahead when the forecast is poor. On every other day it opens at 9.30am, and the last visitors are admitted an hour before the gates shut.

**Where is Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle?**

On the summit, on the terrace outside St Margaret's Chapel in the Upper Ward: go up through Foog's Gate and the chapel is on your left, with Mons Meg in front of it. She is the fifth stop on this page, a gun of about six tonnes given to King James the Second in 1457.

**How long should I allow for Edinburgh Castle?**

The castle recommends setting aside at least two hours for the main attractions. The five stops here add about ten minutes of listening, and most of the walking between them is the cobbled climb of roughly 350 metres from the gate to Crown Square, steepest at Foog's Gate.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything in Edinburgh Castle.

Five places on a rock that holds hundreds. A regimental badge carved over a barrack door, a cannon on the Forewall with no label you can see, a corbel in the Great Hall with a face on it, a spire on the Old Town skyline: take a photo and Chiaro says what it is, who built it and what happened there, then keeps answering while you stand on the battlements.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=edinburgh-castle-md&mt=8