Edinburgh's Talking Statues

An Edinburgh History Tour Not To Be Missed

Statues are seen, often unnoticed...

On this Edinburgh tour you will explore the stories of people from history, immortalised (in bronze), but murky in people’s memories - a fighter, surgeon, scientist, philosopher, an explorer and a politician.

The story of life behind a statue will help you to make up your mind about how ‘worthy’ they are of its dedication. Do we look up to them and their success stories or do we look up and remember their failings, which can teach us as much as their successes?

History's Missing Statues

If you could dedicate a statue to someone, who would it be? What story would it tell?

Mercat Tours will take you on a journey to explore which historic figures from Edinburgh's past we’d like to place on a plinth, who we currently look up to, and whether they deserve their pedestal.

To start, you’ll visit James Braidwood, a fire-fighter who saved lives, homes and cities. He changed the way we operated fire services.  Along the route, you’ll hear about Elsie Inglis, who made it possible for the vulnerable women to receive medical treatment and about James Barry, who trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh and went on to work in South Africa and performed the first ever caesarean there. 

You’ll finish at a statue of one of Scotland's prominent politicians during the 1700s, which was recently the subject of much debate.  Your tour will share stories including LGBTQ+, Black History, and Women's History.

We’ve partnered with the Scottish Storytelling Forum, as part of its Talking Statues project, to deliver an Edinburgh walking tour which explores Edinburgh's different statues. On the tour you'll discover how they got there, the stories behind them, and hear history from a variety of diverse and underrepresented backgrounds.