There’s a wide variety of buildings across Edinburgh offering people a glimpse behind the scenes and a chance to learn more about their history as part of Doors Open Days.
This weekend, September 23-24, 2023, sees scores of places in the Capital take part in the annual opportunity for the public to discover a whole lot more about buildings they may often pass but never venture into.
Among the sites highlighted in this selection of 21 buildings which feature in the programme are artist studios which have taken shape in a former financial building, a church which was designed as Portobello’s very first town hall, the world’s most sophisticated ocean wave testing tank, the US Consulate General and Edinburgh University’s Genome Foundry as well as famous Edinburgh buildings like Stewart’s Melville College and the Royal Observatory.
And we have already featured other buildings which are taking part and places you can visit.
For some of the venues, visitors must book in advance. Some are open both Saturday and Sunday, others just on one of the days. All Doors Open Days events and activities are free. Have a look and see where you fancy dropping in.
21. Edinburgh University Nucleus Building
The Nucleus Building at the heart of Edinburgh University's King's Buildings campus in Blackford, is a brand new shared learning, teaching and social hub which the university says has transformed the student and staff experience. The building design incorporates several sustainability initiatives and has an A-rated Energy Performance Certificate.Visitors will have a chance to meet physicists who work at King's Buildings and take part in hands-on activities about bio-physics, see student societies demonstrating their inspiring work from across all the engineering disciplines, see student societies demonstrating their inspiring work from across all the engineering disciplines and visit the newly-installed gallery of notable women who studied or worked at the university. There will also be h-long walking tours of campus history and architecture leave at 10.30am, 12 noon and 2pm from outside the Nucleus Building. Open: Saturday, September 23, 10am - 4pm. Photo: Scottish Civic Trust