Edinburgh Vaults tickets: how you actually get in

Why there is no ticket desk

People ask me where to buy tickets for the vaults as if there is a booth on Niddry Street with a rack of leaflets and a woman on a stool. There is not, and there never has been. The chambers sat sealed and forgotten for most of a century, and when they came back into use after 1985 they came back as private property. Different operators hold different sets of rooms. They keep them locked, and they unlock them for a booked group and nobody else. That is the entire mechanism, and it is why you cannot get in without a tour.

So the thing you are choosing is not a ticket in the way a museum sells you a ticket. You are choosing a cellar, an operator and a tone of voice. Two of the six tours we compare go into the Blair Street chambers; three go into the South Bridge chambers entered from the Niddry Street side; one never goes underground at all. A booking for one does not admit you to the other, which catches out more visitors than you would think.

What a booking gets you, and what it does not

How the booking works, step by step

You choose the tour, then the date, then the slot. The listing shows which times still have places, so you are not guessing. Confirmation comes through immediately and the voucher sits in your email and in the app. Nobody prints anything. At the meeting point the guide works down a list, you hold up the phone, and that is the sum of the admin.

Two things trip people up here. The first is the meeting point: it is not the vault entrance, and on the South Bridge tours it is a good five minutes uphill from the door you eventually go through. The second is the add-on. The most-booked tour offers a Torture Exhibition extra at the point of booking, and choosing it lifts the suggested minimum age from 5 to 12. Read that box before you tick it. Where everything meets has the four meeting points written out.

How far ahead should you book?

Further than you think for an evening, and barely at all for a Tuesday afternoon. The after-dark slots on the ghost tours go first, Friday and Saturday hardest, and the whole of August behaves like a Friday because the Fringe is on and the same underground is running shows. The small-group tours have fewer places by definition, so they close earlier than the big one. If you want a specific evening, treat it like a restaurant table rather than a bus.

What to have with you

The phone with the voucher, shoes you do not mind getting damp, and a layer. There is no phone signal underground, so load the voucher before you go down rather than trying to summon it in a stone room. What to wear covers the rest, and it is duller than you want it to be: the vaults are cool and damp in July as well as January.

Check what is running

This is the most-booked of the six, and the shortest, which is why it is the one I point people at when they have an hour spare and no fixed idea. If you want the museum and the artefacts instead, read which vaults tour is best first.

Frequently asked questions