Grassmarket: the under-city below the rock
The square under the castle, Victoria Street's curve, the West Bow, and the Cowgate canyon. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Castlehill viewpoint
Start at the top of the Mile and look south-west, down off the ridge. The whole point of this walk is below you — the Grassmarket sits in the hollow under the castle rock. Find the steps down past the Camera Obscura and start dropping.

2. Victoria Street
The curved, stepped street that everyone photographs and few walk properly. Take the upper terrace first for the rooftop view down the bend, then the lower pavement past the shopfronts. The colours are real; the curve is the thing. Half the cafés have a window seat over the street.

3. The Grassmarket
The wide market square, with the castle rearing up behind it on its crag. A weekly Saturday market sets up here; any day, it's the best place in the Old Town to sit with a drink and look up. The Covenanters' memorial in the cobbles marks the old gallows site — Edinburgh's history is rarely far from a hanging.

4. West Bow
The dog-leg where Victoria Street meets the Grassmarket at the bottom — the surviving stub of the old zig-zag road that climbed to the Mile before Victoria Street was cut. Look back up it for the full stacked-tenement effect. Then head east into the Cowgate.

5. The Cowgate
Drop into the canyon — the street that runs under the bridges, in permanent shadow below the Old Town it once rivalled. George IV Bridge and South Bridge pass clean overhead; you're walking at the bottom of the city. Grim and grand at once. Quiet by day, a different animal at night.

6. Cockburn Street
Climb back toward the Mile up Cockburn Street's gentle curve — Victorian, gabled, full of small shops — which spills you out near Waverley. Trains down in the valley, the Old Town stacked above. A fitting way to leave the under-city: by climbing out of it.

Grassmarket: the under-city below the rock