Edinburgh Festivals
During August, Scotland’s capital and cultural centre holds, what is casually termed the Edinburgh Festival. In fact Edinburgh holds a whole host of different festivals, cementing Edinburgh’s reputation as a festival city and attracting a wealth of artistic talent and visitors from all over the world.
The main focus of events is the Edinburgh International Festival, which encompasses a rich programme of classical music, theatre, opera, and performing arts at venues throughout Edinburgh over a three-week period in August. It is quite simply one of the largest cultural events in Europe, started in 1947 with the post war ideal of ‘providing a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’. Quite a broad remit for its founders, which included Sir Rudoph Bing who moved to the States shortly afterwards to manage the Metropolitan in New York.
Even from 1947, performers would stage impromptu shows, outside the official festival, often on the very streets of Edinburgh. This morphed into what is known as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival or just the Fringe for short. The Fringe runs alongside the International festival and features theatre, comedy, music, children’s events and performance art, from around 17,000 performers on various stages at a number of fringe venues in Edinburgh. To see each and every Fringe show it would take you 5 years, 11 months and 16 days!
Then of course there is the famous Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a stunning spectacular of military band music set against the awesome backdrop of Edinburgh Castle. The tattoo is famed for its Scottish pipe and drum bands and massed military bands and also features display teams, dancers and acts from around the world. The first Edinburgh Tattoo was in 1950, but the idea stems from the age old military practice of sending out the drummers to summon the soldiers back to their barracks and out of the pubs!
Today the Tattoo attracts some 200,000 people and the stands on the esplanade outside the castle are a guaranteed sell-out, so booking in advance is strongly advised. Performers at the Tattoo include all of Scotland’s historic regiments and over 30 other countries have been represented at the Tattoo. It is certainly an exciting, not to mention noisy, way of ending a day at the Edinburgh Festival.
Edinburgh’s summer festival programme also includes the Edinburgh Book Festival, one of the largest literary festivals in the world with book readings, discussions and workshops. There is the Edinburgh Film Festival, a renowned showcase of cinematic talent attended by famous names in film from around the world. And the Edinburgh international Jazz and Blues Festival, the longest running Jazz festival in the UK, which starts in late July with a huge Mardi Gras style procession in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, and runs at various venues in Edinburgh throughout August.
If you are planning on going to the Edinburgh Festival it is advised that you book accommodation well in advance. You may have to be prepared to pay a little over the odds, the demand is very high and it’s a sellers market during the festival. But it’s still well worth it to experience Scotland’s capital in full swing at the Edinburgh Festival.
