Go plaque-hunting in old town

Leave Makars’ Court and head for the Royal Mile, where you can find the Heart of Midlothian mosaic, made famous by the novel of the same name. It marks the site of the demolished Old Tolbooth, a former administration centre and execution site, and locals like to spit on it for good luck. In the Grassmarket, a sign outside White Hart Inn pays tribute to former patrons Robert Burns and William and Dorothy Wordsworth. At the Writer’s Corner where Nicolson St. and Drummond St. intersect, plaques commemorate the work of J.K. Rowling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hugh MacDiarmid, and others. A few steps away, Surgeons Hall displays a book bound by Burke’s skin; after he and Hare committed horrific murders in 1828 and sold the corpses to Edinburgh Medical School for dissection, he himself was publically hanged and dissected.