13 photos of Edinburgh’s eerily empty streets during the first lockdown - 5 years ago

Last week (March 23) marked the five-year anniversary of the first Covid lockdown being imposed in Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Few will forget the moment when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made a televised address to the people of Scotland in 2020 to announce the introduction of national lockdown measures as Covid-19 spread across the country.

This included the “stay at home” order, including once-a-day exercise and employees working from home where they can.

Ms Sturgeon stated: “Let me blunt. The stringent restrictions on our normal day to day lives that I’m about to set out are difficult and they are unprecedented. They amount effectively to what has been described as a lockdown.”

The tight measures came into force the next day.

Five years on from that first lockdown annoucement, we look back through the archives to what Edinburgh looked like during those dark days, often under sunny skies, when the city looked liked a ghost town.

Take a look through our picture gallery for a reminder of what life was like in Scotland’s capital city.