From mid-November to early January the Christmas market takes over East Princes Street Gardens, with more on George Street and Castle Street, and the city centre fills up on the exact days and hours the central zones charge the most. Here is how to park for it without paying £9 an hour or coming back to a ticket.
Where the market actually is, and what it closes
The main market sits in East Princes Street Gardens below the Scott Monument, with the rides and bars spilling on to Waverley Bridge. George Street and Castle Street host the ice rink, bars and stalls. Dates are announced each autumn; in recent years the build starts in the first half of November and the site is cleared in the first week of January.
- Castle Street is closed to traffic for the whole run — its pay & display bays are suspended from the build to the take-down.
- Waverley Bridge and parts of Market Street carry restrictions for the site.
- George Street loses bays to the rink and stalls; the ones that remain are Zone 1A, the city's dearest at around £9 an hour.
- Bays on the surrounding streets are suspended in short bursts for deliveries and events. Suspensions are coned with "No Waiting" signs; a car inside one gets a PCN and can be removed.
The free windows
The centre's charging hours are Mon–Sat 8:30am–6:30pm and Sunday 12:30–6:30pm. That leaves three free windows worth planning around.
- Any evening after 6:30pm. Pay & display bays in Zones 1A, 2, 3 and 4 are free until 8:30am the next morning. The market is at its best after dark anyway.
- Sunday morning before 12:30pm in the central zones — the bays are free, but this is limited enforcement, not no enforcement: yellow lines, loading bans and disabled bays are still ticketed. Read the sign.
- The inner zones after 5:30pm on weekdays, and all weekend. Zones 5–8 and every N and S zone. Broughton, Stockbridge, Tollcross and the Southside are all a 10–20 minute walk from the Gardens. The zone directory lists every street.
Daytime: car parks and Park & Ride
St James Quarter is the biggest and nearest multi-storey to the market. Omni on Leith Street and Q-Park Castle Terrace at the West End are the other two people use; all three price by the hour and reward pre-booking, and all three fill on the Saturdays before Christmas. Details and the booking trick for Castle Terrace are in the Castle Terrace guide.
For a full day, Park & Ride beats every option on cost: free to park at all sites, and Ingliston puts you on the tram straight to St Andrew Square, at the market's east end.
The festive parking holidays
Edinburgh has four parking holidays a year, and three fall in this period: Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. On those days pay & display bays, permit bays and single yellow lines are free citywide. Double yellow lines, disabled bays, bus lanes and the Low Emission Zone are enforced as normal — and the holiday does not carry over, so 27 December and 2 January are ordinary charging days. The Council publishes the exact dates each year.
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