The Edinburgh Festival

Every August, Scotland’s capital is transformed into the largest arts festival in the world. For three weeks the city sees its population of around 450,000 double as performers and tourists from every corner of the map descend on the so-called ‘Athens of the north’.

The Edinburgh Festival first came to being in 1947 as part of a post-war effort to ‘provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’. The “Official” Festival is a programme of events in the fields of theatre, opera, music and dance. While the official festival is a popular and successful event, it is not the part that is best known around the world.