Mary King’s Close: The Hidden Street Beneath Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

An AI illustration of a17th-century plague doctor watches over a dying man — an eerie reminder of Edinburgh’s darkest days during the 1645 plague outbreak.

Before New York reached for the clouds, Edinburgh built the world’s first skyscrapers.

By the 1600s, stone tenements in the Old Town climbed as high as 14 storeys — among the tallest residential buildings in Europe. But these weren’t monuments to ambition or luxury. They were born of desperation.

The city was trapped — squeezed between volcanic rock, marshland and its own defensive walls. Every square foot mattered. So Edinburgh did what few others dared: it built up. Towering homes stretched into the narrow sky, stacking rich and poor like books on a shelf. The higher you lived, the wealthier you were — closer to air, light and escape. The poor lived low, in the shadows, where excrement and waste was hurled from windows with a warning cry of “gardyloo!”

Tucked within this vertical maze was Mary King’s Close — a steep, narrow alley off the High Street. Named after something rare in the 17th century: a woman. Mary King was a widowed merchant who ran her own business in the 1630s, and was respected enough for a street to carry her name.

Her close was its own world. Merchants, tailors, washerwomen, servants. Children darting through doorways. Chickens pecking at the cobbles. Oyster shells and wine bottles underfoot. It was noisy, bustling, and full of life.

Then came the plague.

In 1645, Edinburgh was ravaged by one of the deadliest outbreaks in its history. The bubonic plague tore through the crowded closes, infecting thousands. Victims developed black, swollen boils. Fever. Delirium. Death came swiftly — often within days.

White crosses were painted on infected doors. Entire families were locked inside together, whether sick or not. The city was overwhelmed. "Plague doctors" in strange beaked masks shuffled through the alleys, their masks stuffed with herbs to block the stench of death.

There was no cure. No understanding of infection. Only fear.

And fear divided the city.

The wealthy vanished — fleeing to ancestral estates in the countryside. The poor were left behind, trapped inside the stone walls.

And this is where Mary King’s Close takes its darkest turn.

According to legend, the city sealed the close. Bricked it up. Locked the infected inside — quarantined in stone, left to die. Whether that story is fact or folklore is debated to this day. But the horror it conjures has never faded.

What is certain is this: in the 1750s, the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers) was built directly above the close. The upper storeys were torn down. The lower levels — hearths, doorways, rooms — were buried whole, used as the foundations. Mary King’s Close was erased from the map. Not demolished. Just... sealed.

Centuries passed. The city above changed. The street below remained, untouched and forgotten.

Until the 21st century.

When it was finally reopened, what they found was astonishing: a perfectly preserved 17th-century street. Walls and windows. Fireplaces. Floorboards. Dust still lying where feet last stood.

A city paused mid-breath.

Today, you can walk it — not as a museum, but as a street still echoing with the silence of lives once lived. Every stone remembers.

And though the plague of 1645 belongs to another world, its echoes feel eerily familiar. The fear. The isolation. The lockdowns. It was their pandemic — but with no science, no hope, and no way out.

So next time you walk the Royal Mile, pause beside the City Chambers. You’re standing on the roof of a forgotten world. And Mary King’s Close is still down there, waiting in the dark.