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Hidden beneath the South Bridge in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town, the Blair Street Underground Vaults are a series of stone chambers built into the arches of the bridge in the late eighteenth century, now opened to visitors as one of the city's most atmospheric historic attractions. When the bridge was completed in the 1780s to carry a road across a valley, the spaces within its nineteen great arches were enclosed to create vaults intended for storage and for workshops serving the businesses above. Damp, dark and poorly ventilated, the vaults soon proved unsuitable for legitimate trade and were abandoned by respectable merchants, after which they became the haunt of the city's poorest residents and, according to long-standing tradition, of criminals and illicit activity. The vaults were eventually filled with rubble and forgotten for more than a century before being rediscovered and excavated in the late twentieth century. Today guided tours lead visitors through the chambers by lamplight, recounting the social history of the period, the grim conditions endured by those who sheltered there and the ghost stories and folklore that have gathered around the site, making it a popular stop on the city's lively circuit of history and paranormal tours. The combination of genuine eighteenth-century architecture, vivid social history and an undeniably eerie atmosphere gives the experience broad appeal. Tours run regularly through the day and evening and can be booked online in advance, with daytime history-focused visits and after-dark ghost tours catering to different interests throughout the year across every season of the calendar. The vaults form part of a wider network of subterranean spaces beneath the Old Town that has become central to the city's reputation for the spooky and the supernatural, a reputation enthusiastically promoted by the many tour operators who lead visitors through closes, churchyards and cellars after dark. Whether approached as a serious piece of social history or as an entertaining brush with the eerie, the vaults offer a memorable contrast to the elegant streets and grand monuments above ground. Their cool, damp interiors and flickering lamplight transport visitors to a harsher chapter of the city's past, and they have become a fixture of any exploration of hidden Edinburgh throughout the year.