Four storey sandstone tenements run shopfront to shopfront toward Leith, where T2 Trainspotting used the Central Bar's cellar as a fictional pub.
What Leith Walk looks like
The street runs dead straight for about a mile between Picardy Place and the foot of the walk at Leith, four storey tenements lining both sides over ground floor shops. The fronts are sandstone, cream and red, some painted over. Bay windows and dormerheads break the roofline, with pyramidal roofs over a few corners.
crosses roughly at the midpoint and still marks the old boundary between the burghs of Edinburgh and Leith. A little further toward Leith, the tenement at the corner with Balfour Street has a canted bay window under its own pyramidal roof, one of several individually listed buildings strung along the street rather than inside a single protected area. At , a plainer terrace of three storey and attic houses dates from 1814, lower than the Victorian tenements around it.
Most of the ground floor shopfronts are independent, set into painted fascias below the flats above. has traded as an Italian delicatessen from the same address on Elm Row since 1934. A two storey red sandstone block with a black marble pediment breaks the Victorian run further along, built in 1933 as offices for a railway goods yard and now holding a row of shops and the music venue Leith Depot.
stands under its own corner clock tower near the Leith end, rebuilt in 1899 after the earlier pub on the site was demolished for Leith Central Station. The curved corner and clock tower date from the same 1898 to 1903 rebuilding of the old station site.
Shot in Leith Walk
T2 Trainspotting used the cellar of the Central Bar as part of Sick Boy's fictional pub, Port Sunshine, where Begbie meets him for a drink. The ground floor still trades as the Central Bar, under the same corner clock tower the building has carried since being rebuilt in 1899. The BBC Scotland series Guilt also filmed on the street, without naming a specific building.
T2 Trainspotting, 2017
The Central Bar
The cellar of the Central Bar was used as part of Sick Boy's fictional pub, Port Sunshine, where Begbie meets him in T2 Trainspotting. The production combined it with another Edinburgh pub and one in Glasgow to build the completed bar on screen. Street View
What Leith Walk can double for
Dennistoun in Glasgow, Scotland
Dennistoun's tenements are built in the same blonde and red sandstone, four storeys over ground floor shops, from the same decades as Leith Walk's run. Duke Street has a similarly long straight scale, with bay windows breaking the fronts. Glasgow's closes tend wider and the stone runs redder in places, so keep shopfront signage in frame to hold the match. Try searching sandstone tenement shopfronts now.
Hilltown in Dundee, Scotland
Hilltown's tenements share the same sandstone construction and four storey scale over ground floor shops as Leith Walk. The street runs straight for several blocks in a similar commercial spine. Dundee's hills put a steeper backdrop behind the rooftops that Leith Walk's level run does not have, so wider shots need care. Try searching sandstone tenement commercial street now.
Mile End's four storey greystone buildings sit over ground floor shops at roughly the same scale as Leith Walk's tenements, though built a little later. Montreal's spiral exterior stairs and flatter cornices give it away in a wide shot, so tighter frames on the shopfronts hold the match best. Try searching greystone buildings shopfronts now.
