The boy wizard was born in Edinburgh from the pen of JK Rowling. So when you visit Edinburgh with your children go on a Harry Potter tour and combine a historical journey with an exciting detective investigation to find the inspirations for the Harry Potter books.
It’s fairly common knowledge that Harry Potter’s creator, author JK Rowling, started writing the books when living in Edinburgh. But instead of writing at home, she preferred the company of people and took to writing in cafes.
Therefore, so the thinking goes, if she was writing while in Edinburgh, then surely she took some inspiration from all the wonderful nooks, crannies, buildings and streets of Edinburgh’s wonderful Old Town for the characters and settings in Harry’s wizard world.
Did she? You’ll need to take a Harry Potter to find out.
Harry Potter Tours In Edinburgh
If you’re walking around the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, you’re sure to spot some groups of people walking around the old streets being led by a person wearing a gown and carrying a wand. That’s a Harry Potter tour. And there are quite a few to choose from.
Most of the Harry Potter tours are free tours. Free tours are popular for obvious reasons and the tour guide relies on tips for payment after the tour is finished.
Potter Tour
Subtitled ‘Unwrapping the Writing of Harry Potter’, The Potter Tour is a 3 1/2 hour tour described as “JK Rowling’s Edinburgh & the writing of Harry Potter” and is divided into two ‘acts’.
Act I will take you around
The Balmoral Hotel
The Royal Mile
Edinburgh University’s McEwan Hall
The Spoon Cafe (the Philospher’s Stone first cafe)
The street that’s called Potterrow
Act II and you’ll visit:
- The Museum of Scotland for mythological inspirations and connections to the Philosopher’s Stone.
- The mystery of Greyfriars Kirkyard
- George Heriot’s school
- The grave of Tom Riddle (also known as Voldemort).
- The Elephant House – the Chamber of Secrets cafe
- Break from some Butter-brew flavoured ice cream
- Victoria Street or Diagon Alley?
The Potter Tour is a little more in-depth than just a tour of Potter sights and examines JK’s writings throughout.
Tour prices are £11 – £15
More information and booking at https://pottertour.co.uk
Potter Trail
Started in 2012, the Potter Trail offers trained comic actors as your guides. They’ll take you around the Old Town as they show you the Potter sights dressed in their cloaks and carrying their Hogwarts wands. where you’ll:
See where Lord Voldemort is buried
Discover in which café Rowling wrote the FIRST Potter book
Take a trip down the real life Diagon Alley
Find out which house you would be in at Edinburgh’s very own school of magic
Learn who the world’s worst poet was, and which Hogwarts teacher is named after him
Potter Trail is a free tour, that is, you don’t have to pay to go on the tour, but you pay a donation of your choice at the end of the tour, depending on what you thought the tour was worth.
More information at https://pottertrail.com
Free Harry Potter Tour
The Free Harry Potter Tour is run by tour company, City Explorers, which also runs other walking tours in Edinburgh.
The tour claims that it’s not just for Harry Potter nerds but for anyone anyone who is interested in literature, mystery and magic. You’ll discover the relationship between Edinburgh and JK Rowling, the facts and locations that inspired her to write her books and the places where she actually wrote them.
The tour starts on the Royal Mile and throughout the tour you’ll:
Discover the place where Lord Voldemort is buried
Get surprised with the cafes and the hotel that inspired JK Rowling to write her books and the places where she actually wrote them.
Explore the street which was the origin of Diagon Alley
See the real Hogwarts School which inspired Rowling
Meet the worst poet in the history of the English literature and the Hogwarts teacher called after him
The real life Quidditch
More information and booking at https://freeharrypottertour.com/
Orange Tours Harry Potter Tour
Orange Tours operate many free tours in Edinburgh and their Harry Potter tour is included in the free tours that they run. When the tour is finished, you’re asked to contribute a payment depending on what you think the tour was worth. So it’s up to you how much you pay.
The tour covers all the Harry Potter locations where you can:
Walk along the real Diagon Alley
See where Lord Voldemort is buried
Discover the café where the very first book was written
Meet the worst British poet ever and learn about his connection to Harry Potter
See the real school which inspired Hogwarts
More information at https://www.orangetoursedinburgh.com/free-tours/free-harry-potter-tour/
The Edinburgh Harry Potter Tour
This tour is run by tour company Sandemans, which runs walking tours in many cities across Europe. Their Harry Potter tour starts in the Royal Mile and takes in all the locations that inspired JK Rowling’s first two Harry Potter books.
The Sandemans tour will take around the city where you will:
Discover the origins of Quidditch
Find Lord Voldemort’s burial place
See the original Hogwart’s school
Visit the inspiration for Diagon Alley
Learn how so many Harry Potter characters got their names
Hear more about J.K. Rowling’s life in Edinburgh, and see where she wrote Harry Potter
The tour charges vary for adults, students and children.
Do It Yourself Edinburgh Harry Potter Tour
If you’re looking to walk around Edinburgh and see for yourself some of the places and buildings that inspired JK Rowling’s writings you’ll find that they’re all handily located in the Old Town.
The Potter Writing Locations
First off, three places that are definitely linked to Harry Potter novels – where they were written.
Rather than writing at home in her small flat, Rowling started writing in cafes just ‘to be where people are’. She started writing in Nicholson’s, a cafe in Nicholson Street. If you go there now however, you won’t see it. The original owners, one of which was Rowling’s brother-in-law sold up and it became a Chinese restaurant for a while before becoming the Spoon Cafe.
Sadly, however, after 10 years trading, the Spoon has become a victim of the pandemic and closed its doors for good at the end of 2020.
It was while in the Spoon Cafe (Nicholson’s) that Rowling wrote most of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
But if you can’t actually visit Spoon for a coffee anymore, you can grab one in the other cafe associated with Harry Potter – the Elephant House, on George IV Bridge. Rowling wrote Chamber of Secrets there and bits of the Prisoner of Azkhaban.
Finally, Rowling wrote the last few chapters of the last book, Deathly Hallows, in the best suite of the Balmoral Hotel, the grand hotel built on top of Waverley Station as the North British Station Hotel in 1902.
She stayed there, in secret, for 6 months finishing off Deathly Hallows. To commemorate her staying there, the hotel renamed the room (no 552), the JK Rowling Suite.
Harry Potter ‘Locations’
The three most famous ‘inspirations’ are the Greyfriars Kirkyard, West Bow and George Heriot’s school. ‘Inspirations’ in inverted commas because Rowling has always said that she gained inspiration from many different places for Harry Potter.
However, because she started writing in Edinburgh, there are strong reasons for thinking that these three locations really did inspire Tom Riddell and other characters, Diagon Alley, and Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft itself.
The Grave Of He Who Must Not Be Named?
After you’ve finished your coffee and the first chapter of your new novel in the Elephant House, take a stroll to the nearby Greyfriars Kirkyard and start examining the gravestones.
Take a right outside the Elephant House and walk along George IV Bridge to the little statue of Greyfriars Bobby and you’ll see the gates to the Kirkyard.
It’s actually a lovely place to walk around (in daylight!) and the kirk (church) itself is beautiful. As you walk along the paths between the graves, keep an eye open for a gravestone bearing the name of one Thomas Riddell! Do you think, that’s him?
Also in the graveyard you’ll find the grave of William Topaz McGonagall, often called Scotland’s worst poet. His ode to the River Tay has lines like this:
Beautiful silvery Tay,
With your landscapes, so lovely and gay,
Along each side of your waters, to Perth all the way;
But do you recognise the name from the professor who can turn into a cat?
Diagon Alley: The West Bow and Victoria Street?
From the kirkyard, make your way to Diagon Alley, but don’t exit the kirkyard from the gate you entered. Instead, walk down through the kirkyard and exit from the bottom gate, where you’ll find yourself at the junction of Candlemaker Row and Cowgate.
Walk down to the Cowgate and turn left into the Grassmarket, then immediately turn right to view the street that’s been called JK Rowling’s inspiration for the “cobblestoned shopping area for the wizarding world“
And you can see why it could be an inspiration of Diagon Alley. For it is a wonderful street of old, tightly packed houses with all kinds of shops on street level selling all kinds of things. Add to that the wonderful gallery that runs along the upper floors that’s reached by some creepy old stairs and you can almost sense that you’re in Diagon Alley.
Hogwarts: George Heriot’s School?
After you’ve walked up and down the West Bow and Victoria Street, you’ll find yourself back at the Grassmarket. From there, it’s a short walk along this wonderful old street to the steps that will take you to the inspiration for Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft.
Walk eastwards, on the south side of the street, to a an alley with steps, called The Vennel. Climb the steps all the way to the top.
The interesting thing about the Vennel is that it follows the extension to the Flodden Wall, the great wall built around Edinburgh following the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
At the top, turn left and walk along Lauriston Place. By this time, you’ve probably already seen the great four-tower building that is George Heriot’s School.
It was actually built from a legacy left by a man called George Heriot, who was jeweller to King James VI of Scotland and I of England. Heriot was stupendously wealthy (which was good news for James, who was always strapped for cash).
Heriot’s will left money to build a school for ‘poor fatherless bairns’ to be educated. Originally called Heriot’s Hospital (hospital in this instance means a charitable school) it was built in 1628 and finally opened for 30 children in 1659.
Was it the inspiration for Hogwarts? Maybe. The plot of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone already included Harry attending a school for wizards. And Rowling has always called Edinburgh ‘my city’. And remember that both Harry and Tom Riddell were both orphans (fatherless bairns). And the school does have four houses, just like Hogwarts. Sad to say though, that pupils are not allocated to their houses by a talking hat.