Grassmarket

A heavy iron horseshoe set into the cobblestones marks the site of the former gallows in the Grassmarket. For centuries, this valley floor served as Edinburgh’s primary marketplace, filled with grain carts and cattle. It also functioned as the city’s place of public execution. In seventeen twenty-four, Maggie Dickson survived her hanging here. After her body was carted away, she woke up in her coffin, lived another forty years, and became known to locals as Half-Hangit Maggie.