This alley off Edinburgh's Royal Mile contains remnants of the city's seedier history.

Overlooking a Scottish loch, this beautifully crumbling castle once inspired a poem by William Wordsworth.

Every birth, death, and marriage is recorded in these color-coded leather-bound books.

These ruins witnessed the final gathering of the failed Jacobite Rebellion.

A succession of eerily contemplative iron figures lead from a Scottish museum to the sea.

This macabre monument atop an ancient well gives a nod to a brutal episode in Scottish clan history.

A 200-year-old collection of oddities and medical paraphernalia.

A castle in the Scottish Highlands has been continuously inhabited since the 1300s.

This otherwise ordinary close on the Royal Mile constituted the end of the world for Edinburgh’s poorest residents.

This 16th-century house tells the city's history through old artifacts and quirky tales.

A curious collection of mechanical moving figures.

The remains of a grand castle that may have inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula.

A statue in the heart of Edinburgh honors a bear that served in the Polish military during World War II.

A sweet symbol marks the place where torturous executions were once carried out.

This obscure walkway links Edinburgh’s Old Town with one of the city's prime vantage points.

A labyrinthine network of chambers with a storied past hides below Edinburgh's South Bridge.

A book bound in the skin of an infamous criminal, along with countless other specimens.

Islanders once used this dramatic, otherworldly landscape to hide their cattle from Viking raiders.

A 18th century graveyard and its astonishing cortege of macabre iconography.

These fantastically named natural pools look like something out of a Scottish myth.

Learn local history while picking up groceries at this museum tucked inside a supermarket.

Hot Doug's "Hot Dog" Stand.

A famed drink seasoned with an amputated toe, now on its tenth digit.

A hot dog stand where the heads are just as hot as the dogs.