The Edinburgh's Harry Potter Walking Tour
Recommended by 96% of travelers
Badge of Excellence
Edinburgh, Scotland
- 2 hours (approx.)
- Mobile ticket
- Offered in: English
Why travelers loved this
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Overview
This 'Harry Potter' walking tour gets fans closer to spots in Edinburgh that inspired J.K Rowling’s famous books. Walk past key sites that inspired places such as Diagon Alley, and even see the cafes and hotels where the writer wrote her book series. Your guide knows the quickest ways to get around the city on foot to fit more into your time, as well as fun facts about Harry Potter.
- A guide knows all of the spots in Edinburgh associated with 'Harry Potter'
- Learn about J.K Rowling and how Edinburgh inspired her to write
- See city sights up close while staying active during your vacation
- This 'Harry Potter' walking tour has an easy-to-find meeting spot
What's Included
- Professional guide
- Small-group experience
- Hotel pickup and drop-off
- Gratuities
Meeting and Pickup
Meeting point
- 130 High St, Edinburgh EH1 1QS, UK
Your Edinburgh Harry Potter Tour starts at 130 High Street, on the corner with Stevenlaw's Close. Looking at Starbucks? Look right, 130 High Street is two doors up the street. If you hit traffic lights, you went the wrong way. Look for the SANDEMANs Tours team with a SANDEMANs red umbrella.
End point
- The Mound, Edinburgh, UK
Your Edinburgh Harry Potter Tour usually finishes by The Mound, a 10-min walk away from the starting point of the tour. There are MANY great options for food and drinks in the area after your tour, and your guide will be happy to share their favorites.
Start time.3:30 pm
Itinerary
1
Edinburgh Old Town
15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
2
Royal Mile
15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
3
Edinburgh City Chambers
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
4
The Elephant House
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
5
Greyfriars Kirk
20 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
6
George Heriot's School
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
7
Victoria Street
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
8
Edinburgh Castle
15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
9
The Balmoral, a Rocco Forte hotel
5 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
10
The Mound
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
Additional Info
- Confirmation will be received at time of booking
- Not wheelchair accessible
- Stroller accessible
- Near public transportation
- Most travelers can participate
- Children under 5 years old accompanied by an adult can join this tour for free.
- We unfortunately do not advise guests in wheelchairs to join the Harry Potter Tour, due to the narrow stairways and steep hills. We apologise for any inconvenience or disappointment caused.
- Our guides have your best interests in mind; while the tour usually includes the sites & stories mentioned and lasts about 2-2.5 hours, your tour may vary depending on what your guide thinks is best for your group.
- Children under 16 years old must be accompanied by an adult.
- This tour/activity will have a maximum of 20 travelers
Supplied by
Cancellation Policy
You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.
Traveler Photos
Reviews
4.8
based on 556 reviews
Sort by: Most insightful
Belle holds true as a full energetic Harry Potter fan and includes stories for fans and those not familiar with Harry Potter. If you are a fan, this tour with Belle will not disappoint.
Response from Host, Sep 2026
Thank you so much for your fantastic review! We’re delighted to hear that Belen brought her Harry Potter enthusiasm and energy to the tour. It’s wonderful to know that her stories worked well for both devoted fans and those less familiar with the books and films. We’re so glad you enjoyed exploring Edinburgh’s magical side with Belen!
Karla | SANDEMANs Team
Excellent experience on the JK Rowling/Harry Potter Edinburgh tour on 8/8/26 with Belle. She was outstanding! Highly recommend this 2 hr tour. Thank you!
Response from Host, Aug 2026
Thank you for your fantastic feedback! We're delighted to hear that you had such an excellent experience on our Harry Potter walking tour with Belen. We're glad she helped make the two-hour tour so enjoyable, and we truly appreciate your recommendation. We hope to welcome you on another SANDEMANs tour in the future!
Kind regards,
Karla M
SANDEMANs Team
Lots of walking and interesting local history , Clara was an excellent guide whoade the experience fun!
Response from Host, Sep 2026
Thank you so much for your lovely review! We’re delighted to hear that Clara made the Harry Potter walking tour such a fun experience with her energy and storytelling. It’s great to know you also enjoyed discovering some of Edinburgh’s local history along the way. We hope you had a magical time exploring the city with Clara!
Karla | SANDEMANs Team
Sarah did an excellent job! She clearly knows her Harry Potter! The tour really opened my eyes to the experiences and to the buildings in Edinburgh that helped to shape the Harry Potter stories!
Response from Host, Jul 2026
Thank you so much for your lovely review!
We're delighted to hear you enjoyed the Harry Potter tour with Sarah. It's wonderful to know her knowledge helped bring the stories to life and gave you a new appreciation for the places in Edinburgh that inspired the magical world. We hope to see you again soon!
Karla | SANDEMANs Team
Got to see a bit of the city and learn some fun facts about the author and when she wrote Harry Potter with ties to the city.
Sarah was absolutely authentic, funny and had the most amazing details! We were in awe listening to the stories (and the realities) behind the Potterworld. She organized the tour superbly well and was interactive with kids and adults alike. Must do activity for Potter fans!
This tour and Sarah were magnificent. The subject matter alone is fantastic but Sarah's passion brought a whole new level of excitement to JK Rawling's brilliance. I was already a Harry Potter fan but even if I wasn't, I definitely would be now!!!
This is the second time I've done this tour, and it is so fun (assuming you're an HP fan! And although I've done it before, I learned new facts and perspectives.
Kristel was a great tour guide! We learned so much about Harry Potter and its origins. 100% recommend.
Wow! Such a fun tour. Highly recommended. There are a lot of Harry Potter tours to choose from but Sandemans Tours are top notch. You can't go wrong, book this tour now!
Kristel made this tour so fun! We love Harry Potter (well, my wife’s the one that’s read the books 7x and watches all 7 movies each Christmas) and this tour was perfect! Kristel was full of trivia (wait. . . Dumbledore, Harry, Voldemort . . . what?) about the books but also about Edinburgh. If you love Harry Potter or are just curious this tour is for you.
I chose this tour specifically because it didn't seem cheesy. I was with my adult daughters, and we didn't want to play trivia games, wear a silly hat or deal with lots of little kids. It was perfect! There were a couple kids, but the tour was info-packed, briskly paced and mercifully cheese-free. We also learned a lot about Scottish history, which was great. We only had one day for sightseeing -- we were in town for a Uni graduation -- so we only did this tour and the castle tour, and they dovetailed perfectly. A big shout-out to our guide, Sarah! She was exceptional -- energetic, knowledgable, great with every question and also INCREDIBLY easy to understand despite her accent. As a local, she also offered several personal recommendation for additional sightseeing and restaurants at the close of the tour. She was also very meticulous in keeping track of all of us and keeping us together when crossing streets, etc. Highly recommend!
Sarah was very knowledgeable, enthusiastic and a huge Harry Potter fan. I would highly recommend this tour guide
It was so informative! Learned a lot of facts about JK Rowling and how she got her inspirations while she lived in Edinburgh! Our tour guide was so knowledged with Harry Potter and JK Rowling. He made it so interesting loved his pictures he had. I can't remember his name, except he went by The Guide With the Glasses! He really did a lot of research for his role as the tour guide for Harry Potter! Excellent tour!
Link to app would not produce tickets. Lots of email confirmations but app indicated I had no bookings since a trip in South Carolina 2024
Response from Host, May 2025
Dear Catherine,
Thank you very much for taking the time to share your feedback. We're truly sorry to hear that you had a frustrating experience with the Viator app — and we absolutely understand how that can impact the start of a trip.
That said, as the tour operator, we are responsible for delivering a high-quality guided experience, and unfortunately, we don’t have control over technical issues with third-party platforms like Viator.
We hope you found the tour itself enjoyable and that your guide helped make your visit memorable. Reviews focused on the app may unintentionally give the impression that the quality of the tour was lacking, which we’re confident was not the case.
If you feel the tour met or exceeded your expectations, we would be very grateful if you could consider editing your review to reflect your experience with one of our amazing guides. Your words go a long way in helping others discover authentic and enriching experiences.
Thank you again for your understanding and support.
Warm regards,
Ewelina Telej
Operations Director
SANDEMANs Tours
To find the tour guide, they will send you notification on Viator saying to look for a person with a red umbrella. That person will be standing right infront of starbucks on the royal mile and next to India kitchen. It is a long tour but you won’t feel the time due to the story telling and the tour guide showing you where J.K Rowling got inspirations for her Harry Potter books 🥹 Also, Sarah the tour guide was AWESOME!! She was so welcoming and kind and she definitely knew her facts. She answered all of our questions and asked us questions to keep us intrigued!! She reignited the love that I had forgotten for Harry Potter and I would definitely do the tour again with Sarah! So thank you for a great tour and a great tour guide 🥹🥹
This tour was a perfect retrospective of JK Rowling’s journey, end-to-end, complete with interesting factoids not found elsewhere. Our guide Sarah is knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and provides a vibrant unfolding of the behind the scenes details tying everything back to the book series. Be sure to book with Sarah for a fun, fact-filled walking tour.
We enjoyed walking the streets of Edinburgh and learn about JK Rowling and Harry Potter. Definitely a must to do when in Edinburgh.
Sarah our guide made the tour magical! A fantastic guide (I am a qualified Failte Tourguide and hard to impress), but she was great.
Response from Host, Dec 2024
Hi Stephan,
Thank you for your fantastic feedback! Coming from a qualified Fáilte tour guide, your praise means the world to us. 🌟 We’re so glad Sarah was able to impress and make your tour magical with her skills and passion.
We hope to welcome you back for more incredible adventures in the future!
Best regards,
Margarita | SANDEMANs
We were very disappointed in our tour guide, Ryan, to the point we left early. He KNEW his stuff - he was knowledgeable and had a ton of info we wanted to learn about - but he was very unprofessional at many times of the tour, including playing a horn in the middle of the graveyard while talking about Tom Riddle. He mentioned multiple times how he didn’t want to be there/the tour wasn’t his optimal time and the company didn’t want to deal with it/the tour was only for nerds. As a HP fan, me and my friends really wanted to learn about it all, but were turned off by the disengagement with the subject matter. I learned more about our tour guide than Harry Potter’s start in Edinburgh.
He also kept bringing up other tours outside of the Harry Potter tour, but spoke negatively about this tour — that the city was milking it and shamed HP fans for wanting to learn. Overall, would recommend the tour, but hope you end up with a different tour guide. It was really disappointing for us.
Response from Host, Dec 2024
Dear Shelby,
Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. We are truly sorry to hear that your experience on the Harry Potter tour didn’t meet your expectations. We aim to provide informative and engaging experiences for all of our guests, and I understand how frustrating it must have been to feel disengaged during the tour, especially on a topic you're passionate about.
We take professionalism and enthusiasm very seriously, and your comments will help us to ensure that our guides are fully engaged and provide the best possible experience for our guests. It’s always our goal to make every tour enjoyable and informative, and we regret that we didn’t meet that standard.
We appreciate your understanding and hope that if you decide to join us on another tour in the future, your experience will be much more in line with the high-quality service we strive to deliver.
Warm regards,
Margarita I SANDEMANs
Ryan, our guide was early and easily found in the crowd at the given location. He was very personable & friendly. Despite growing up in Canada, he knew a lot about Edinburg providing history as well as relating various locations to the Harry Potter series. The tour format was fun. We each introduced ourselves and identified our Hogwarts house. Houses were awarded points for answering trivia questions about the Harry Potter series. I would recommend this tour to others.
Krystal our guide wad extremely conscientious and personable. She had very interesting details and an interesting way about her. Our group was a bit large. A smaller group would have been easier for her to manage and less of a disruption to others.
Sarah, our guide, is a passionate Potter enthusiast. She capably led the group in an organized manner as she painted the story of how JK Rowling used Edinburgh sites to create her magical tale.
Our guide was very knowledgable about the area. The tour was a perfect length to get a feel for the area whilst hearing amazing stories about Harry Potter.
My husband and I and our 4 teenage/young adult children loved this tour! Some of our kids are big Harry Potter fans so we booked the tour for them, but we all ended up having a great time. Ryan our tour guide was the best! He was funny, engaging, knowledgeable & entertaining. It was easy to find him at the beginning of the tour. Even though our tour had 20+ people on it we never had trouble hearing Ryan (& I’m hearing impaired). Overall it was a fun way to spend the afternoon in Edinburgh, just a wonderful experience! Would highly recommend!
Sarah provided a lot of interesting insight into JK Rowling’s inspiration for the Harry Potter series.
Kristie was very enthusiastic, knowledgeable and engaging. We had a marvelous time seeing the sites that inspired JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. We highly recommend Kristie!
First time to Scotland. Great tour and very informative. Highly recommend! Do your when you first arrive. Helps you navigate the area!
Sarah was really good,with lots of interesting information about Harry Potter. It is definitely worth a booking.
Tour guide was quirky and knowledgeable! Really enjoyed the tour. Only criticism was difficulty finding the meeting point as it doesn’t seem to exist as a number on high street, should change!
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