Greyfriars Kirkyard: What to See, and the Tours Worth Taking

Greyfriars Kirkyard is the burial ground beside Greyfriars Kirk, at the top of Candlemaker Row, and it has been in use since the 1560s. You do not need a ticket to go in. The kirk’s own site says the kirkyard is open to visitors 24 hours a day, and the church itself is free to enter, with donations welcome. A tour adds the stories behind the stones, and the most-reviewed one goes in after dark and finishes in the South Bridge Vaults.

Is Greyfriars Kirkyard worth visiting?

Yes, even if you only have half an hour. It is one of the few places in the Old Town where you can see 17th-century Edinburgh as it was carved: skulls, hourglasses and angels on the wall monuments, and iron mortsafes over some graves, put there to stop body snatchers. It is also an active burial ground owned by the City of Edinburgh Council, so walk the paths and leave the stones alone.

Where is Greyfriars Bobby?

Bobby’s statue stands outside the kirkyard gate, at the junction of George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row, where it was put up in 1873. The story is that the Skye terrier kept watch over the grave of his owner, John Gray, for about 14 years until his own death in 1872. Bobby’s small headstone is just inside the gate. Historians still argue about how much of the story is true.

Who was “Bloody” George Mackenzie?

Sir George Mackenzie was Lord Advocate under Charles II, the lawyer who prosecuted the Covenanters, the Presbyterians who refused to accept the king’s authority over their church. After the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679, hundreds of captured Covenanters were held in the open, for months, in a field on the south side of the kirkyard. That ground later became the walled section known as the Covenanters’ Prison. The vaulted tombs you see there were built afterwards, so nobody was kept inside them.

Mackenzie died in 1691 and was buried in a domed tomb a few yards from that ground, now called the Black Mausoleum. Since a rough sleeper broke into it in the late 1990s, visitors have blamed scratches, bruises and fainting fits on the “Mackenzie Poltergeist”. The Covenanters’ Prison is kept locked. The council can arrange daytime access, and at night City of the Dead Tours takes groups inside.

Is this the Harry Potter graveyard?

It is the one fans mean. A headstone here remembers Thomas Riddell, who died in 1806, and the name Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort’s real name in the books. Other surnames in the kirkyard, McGonagall among them, turn up in the series too. J.K. Rowling wrote in cafés on George IV Bridge, a short walk away, which is why fans link the names to this kirkyard. The daytime tour points out the graves; people are buried there, so keep it respectful.

Who else is buried here?

• James Hutton, the geologist who argued that the Earth is far older than people then believed
• Joseph Black, the chemist who identified carbon dioxide
• Allan Ramsay, the poet, and William McGonagall, often called the worst poet in Scotland, in an unmarked grave
• John Gray, Bobby’s owner
• George Mackenzie, in the Black Mausoleum

The National Covenant, the document at the centre of the Covenanters’ story, was signed inside Greyfriars Kirk in 1638.

How long does it take to walk around?

Half an hour covers Bobby, the Riddell stone and the Covenanters’ memorial. Allow an hour if you want to read the older monuments along the walls. The guided day tour takes an hour and a half, and the night tour spends part of its 90 minutes in the kirkyard before moving on to the vaults.

Day or night?

Go in daylight if you want to read the stones and find particular graves. Go with the night tour if you want the atmosphere and the ghost stories, and add the vaults in the same evening. Many visitors do both: a look round by day, then back after dark with a guide.

Prices, ratings and review counts from GetYourGuide, checked May 2026; operators change prices by season, so treat them as the shape of the market, not a quote. For the other ways to spend an Edinburgh evening, see the ghost tour comparison, and for the vaults themselves, their history.