United Kingdom
Edinburgh
For one month a year the largest arts festival on earth, and free national galleries all the others
Eleven months of free national galleries and Georgian calm, then one August in which more than three thousand shows compete for an audience.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world, and it exists because eight companies turned up uninvited to the first International Festival in 1947 and performed anyway. There is still no selection committee: anyone who can find a room and an audience is in the programme, which is why August offers more than three thousand shows and why the quality ranges from career-defining to unwatchable within one hour.
The rest of the year the city is quieter and considerably cheaper. The Scottish national galleries are free, the portrait gallery is a neo-gothic surprise, and the modern art site sits in parkland west of the centre with a Landform earthwork in front of it. Nothing takes long to reach: the Old Town and New Town together are walkable in an afternoon, uphill.
If you come in August, book accommodation six months ahead, buy International Festival tickets early, leave the fringe to chance, and trust the small venues. The four-star reviews on the posters are usually accurate and always three years old.
The day
Edinburgh hour by hour
When things open, when they fill and when the city changes shift.
- 10:00National galleries open, free, quiet outside August.
- 12:00In August the fringe programme starts and does not stop for eighteen hours.
- 19:30International Festival curtain: the curated, ticketed, orchestral half of the summer.
- 22:00Late-night fringe. The best comedy of the year happens in rooms that hold forty people.
- 01:00The festival bars, where performers and critics pretend not to watch each other.
The quarters
Where to walk
Four districts that between them cover most of what matters.
Old Town
The Royal Mile, which in August becomes a four-kilometre queue of performers handing out flyers.
New Town
Georgian terraces, the national gallery and the portrait gallery, both free all year.
Leith
The old port: galleries in warehouses, the best restaurants and the fringe venues that escaped the centre.
Southside
University halls that become theatres for one month and lecture rooms for eleven.
The venues
7 rooms in Edinburgh
Theatres
Live Rooms and Clubs
The calendar
Festivals in Edinburgh
Plan it
Forty-eight hours in Edinburgh
Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, built from the venues above.
Questions
What is the difference between the Festival and the Fringe?
The International Festival is curated, ticketed and largely orchestral, operatic and theatrical. The Fringe is open access, anyone can perform, and it is about ten times the size.
Can I visit in August without tickets?
Yes. Half the fringe operates on pay what you want, the Royal Mile is a free continuous performance and same-day tickets exist for most shows at the half-price hut.
Is it worth coming outside August?
Very much so. The galleries are free, the city is beautiful, hotel prices fall by two thirds and you can get a table for dinner.
Next
Other cities
86Germany
Berlin
Three opera houses, five museums on one island and a club that never asks the time
85United Kingdom
London
The greatest free collections on earth and the most expensive tickets in Europe
82France
Paris
The museum as a state religion, and an opera house built to be looked at
85United States
New York
Broadway, the Met and a downtown that reinvents the rules every decade