Overview
Walk in royal footsteps around Holyrood Abbey, founded by David I in 1128. The cloister precinct was later turned into a modern Renaissance palace – Holyroodhouse – and became the royal family’s main home in Scotland.
The abbey’s choir and transepts were lost soon after the Protestant Reformation, though the nave survived as a parish church. But it too fell to ruins after the Catholic James VII and II evicted the worshippers in 1687.
What to see and do
- Wander through the abbey nave and gardens after touring the Palace of Holyroodhouse (run by the Royal Collection Trust)
- Admire the east processional doorway, the only surviving part of David I’s original ‘monastery of the Holy Rood’
- Take in the west front of the rebuilt abbey church, one of the most impressive Gothic façades anywhere in Scotland
- View the royal vault, the final resting place of both royalty and Augustinian canons
