Visiting the Mysterious Rosslyn Chapel: What to See, Do, and Know
If you’re looking for a place with fascinating history and architecture and a good legend or two, be sure to add Rosslyn Chapel to your Scotland itinerary!
This famous church resides on the grounds of the now crumbling Rosslyn Castle, and it has ties to Scottish aristocracy, the Knights Templar, and possibly even the Holy Grail.
Plus, it’s an easy half hour drive from downtown Edinburgh, making it an excellent day trip from the city.
In the guide below, you’ll find out everything you need to plan a great visit from a tour review and points of interest in the chapel to what to do nearby and where to stay.
The exterior of the back of Rosslyn Chapel
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What is Rosslyn Chapel?
My husband outside of the visitors entrance
In recent years, Rosslyn Chapel is probably most famous for its appearance in Dan Brown's historical mystery, The DaVinci Code, but it’s long been a source of discussion for historians and conspiracy theorists alike for being the potential hiding place of the Holy Grail.
Yet, even if you have zero interest in paperback mysteries or the Holy Grail, Rosslyn Chapel is fascinating.
I’d go so far as to say that you don’t have to be interested in churches or even be religious, and you’ll still come away with a great experience.
What you’ll find at Rosslyn Chapel is a medieval structure dating to around 1440 CE that has been shrouded in mysteries for centuries.
It may or may not have ties to the Knights Templar, an important group of men who were sent to the Holy Land during the Crusades to protect other pilgrims
The Knights Templar may or may not have also been instructed to find the Holy Grail, and they may or may not have succeeded and brought the cup back to Scotland.
As you can see, there aren’t too many definitive answers about the chapel and those surrounding its earliest days.
Even the name, “Rosslyn” (sometimes spelled “Roslin”) means “Rose Line,” which people point to as evidence that the chapel is tied to Jesus, his lineage, and/or his Holy Grail in some manner. The “rose” of the title supposedly refers to Mary, whose image is tied to the flower in multiple ways.
There’s an ongoing discussion about ley lines and how they’re tied to Rosslyn Chapel, but it is very easy to get into unsubstantiated woo-woo stuff when talking about this place.
Basically, if you want to fall down a rabbit hole about long kept secrets, Scottish knights, and the Christian church, this is a great place to do so.
It’s safe to say that, whatever else you believe about the place, Rosslyn Chapel is a place of immense beauty and more stories to tell than you could possibly explore in a lifetime.
How Long Should My Visit Take?
If you just want to see the chapel, you should plan to be at the property for 90 minutes or so.
This will give you a chance to look through the visitors center, explore the chapel on your own, and then hop on one of the short, docent-led tours.
If you want to add on a trip to the castle and Roslin Glen, you could easily spend 2-3 hours here, depending on how much hiking you wanted to do in the forest.
When is the Best Time to Visit Rosslyn Chapel?
Thanks to its inclusion in both the book and film versions of The Da Vinci Code, Rosslyn Chapel has skyrocketed in popularity in the last 15 years.
If you’re visiting on a weekend, especially in the summer, or during a school holiday, expect there to be crowds and be patient.
If you want to get away from the crowds, come on a Monday or Tuesday morning in the late fall or winter as soon as the property opens. You’ll likely have the place to yourself and will have a much more relaxed visit.
NOTE: If you loved The DaVinci Code and want to see Rosslyn Chapel alongside other places of mystery and legend, consider taking the Code Breakers’ Choice guided tour. It’s a full day guided tour from Edinburgh, and stops by Rosslyn Chapel in addition to Penicuik House and Castlelaw Hillfort.
Chapel Tour Options
When you arrive at Rosslyn Chapel, you’ll pick up your ticket and then you’ll be on your way to explore the property however you see fit.
While there’s plenty to do outside of the chapel, I recommend heading into the church first as it is the heart of this site.
You can choose from a self-guided or docent-led tour depending on how in depth you’d like to get with your visit. Both are included in your ticket price, so it comes down your personal interests and time outlay.
PIN ME!
Self-guided Tour
If you want to see the inside of the chapel, and are happy bouncing from place to place as it interests you, the self-guided tour might be your best bet.
You’ll find informational placards throughout the chapel that will teach you quick facts about the stained glass, carvings, history, and architecture.
This is a great way to get an overview of the chapel’s layout and points of interests, even if you plan on doing the docent-led tour, too.
My family ended up doing both while we were visiting.
I really like to explore a place when I’m sightseeing, and I don’t like to feel as if I’ve left a stone unturned.
There was the tiniest bit of overlap between the self-guided informational signs and what the docent covered, but they’re really two very different experiences.
Docent-led Tour
If you’d rather have someone else direct your visit of the chapel, opt for the docent-led tour. These run throughout the day, and you can join one at any time.
The tours are advertised as lasting 20-30 minutes, but if you are visiting in the low season, the docents will hang out and talk with you as long as you’d like.
While we were visiting in mid-November, our docent asked us at the end of the usual informational talk time if we had any other questions and that he’d be happy to keep going with more history and details if we wanted.
We ended up chatting with him about different parts of the chapel and its history for over 45 minutes, and he was one of the reasons why we loved visiting here so much!
The docents are incredibly knowledgeable about the chapel, its history, and the grounds, and I recommend jumping on one of their tours if only ask any questions you have about the place. (You’ll get a lot more than that out of the tour, though!)
Children’s Guide
One thing that I love about traveling in the UK is that so much attention is put into making sure historical sites are accessible to kids.
If you’re visiting Scotland with your kids and you’re really into history, you also have to remember that, to most kids, one castle or one chapel looks similar to the next.
Rosslyn Chapel has put a lot of thought into how to make their property appealing to younger visitors, and the free Children’s Guide is the result.
This colorful guide is laid out similarly to the Junior Ranger booklets you get at the U.S. national parks, with activities, word games, and the like used to teach kids about the property. It encourages kids to look at the details of the chapel by counting certain elements in the carvings or looking for a particular part of the property.
My kids are usually pretty interested in history and architecture, but booklets like this are excellent for keeping that initial attention and allowing us parents to read the informational signs while they work on their guides.
Ask at the visitors center desk for the free guides for your kids.
Points of Interest in Rosslyn Chapel
The Apprentice Pillar | source
While the chapel looks like one of the many churches owned by a major Christian denomination throughout Europe, it’s actually privately held by the St. Clair family.
They’ve been a part of the chapel’s history since it was built in the 1440s, and the current Earl of Rosslyn is actively involved in the ongoing restoration and scientific research here.
The interior of the Chapel has the most incredible carvings that I've ever seen, and I spent much of my time in the chapel marveling at them.
The intricacies of the carvings are such that you can look at the same pillar or section of ceiling for 10 minutes, and still find new things hidden in them.
For example, check out the elaborately carved Apprentice Pillar (right).
Then, in the very front of the chapel, there is a series of small, 3-D boxes carved into the ceiling.
According to a medieval music scholar, the carvings on these boxes represent music notes. The unique patterns on each of the boxes supposedly line up with the individual note’s cymatic patterns.
You can learn more about this theory by watching this YouTube video on the "Rosslyn Motet.”
The fact that there may or may not be a hidden song carved into the ceiling of the chapel is another one of those funny mysteries that I mentioned earlier on in the guide.
One of the most iconic carvings in the chapel is that of the Green Man, which is a pagan symbol that symbolizes the cyclic nature of death and rebirth.
It seems a little old that such a decidedly non-Christian symbol would appear in a family chapel, but when the chapel was built that very old symbol had been reworked into one that focused on good versus evil.
And that seems to fit much more fully into the Christian symbolism of a church.
See how many of the 100 Green Man carvings you can find all over Rosslyn Chapel!
Another thing to note is that the chapel is only partially finished from what the original builder planned.
What you see today was only supposed to be the choir area, but after William St. Clair died, his son either ran out of money or lost interest in the property.
If you look at the exterior of the chapel, you’ll find several columns that look half finished. This is due to the fact that additional carvings, walls, and structural elements were never added.
You can see a glimpse of these columns in this video that we took while we were there:
You can go down into the crypt on the chapel’s lower floor to see another really beautiful stained glass window and several areas where the St. Clair family would’ve been buried in vaults.
Interestingly, there’s another vault underneath the Chapel, but it has been sealed for hundreds of years, and there is no plan to open it.
No one knows what's there, but there was an ultrasound done of the chapel several years ago which found 12 tombs containing men in complete armor.
That’s not quite what Dan Brown theorized in The DaVinci Code, .who theorized that it was the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail down there, but, hey, we all make mistakes.
For my fellow British literature nerds, Sir Walter Scott wrote a poem about the chapel called “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and mentions the St. Clair family and the nearby castle:
Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie,
Each Baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheath'd in his iron panoply.
Sir Walter Scott also wrote about many other places in this same area of Scotland that are also worth a visit including Doune Castle, which features in his novel Waverley.
Plan more of your adventures in the British Isles:
The Caledonian Sleeper Train to Scotland: How to Get from London to Edinburgh
Melrose Abbey: Must-See Historic Ruins near Edinburgh, Scotland
10 Day Road Trip in Ireland Itinerary: Best of the Emerald Isle
A Guide to Visiting Newgrange: Ireland’s Mysterious Neolithic Site
First Time Visitor’s Guide to London: Where to Visit, Eat, Sleep and Shop
What to Do Elsewhere on the Property
The Visitors Center
Don’t just grab your tickets and go. The visitors center has some great areas of interest that deserve a moment or two, especially if you’re traveling with kids.
There are several interactive exhibits for younger visitors, including a dress up corner to help immerse them in the culture of 15th century Scotland.
They can also learn about the impressive construction of the church, particularly the usefulness of the Gothic arch. Kids can build and rebuild their own version of a Gothic arch with soft, velcro blocks.
Rosslyn Castle Ruins
While we were in the area, we decided to take a quick hike to nearby Rosslyn Castle, which was built in the early 1300s.
Today, you can see the ruins of part of the castle, while a newer, and much more structurally sound, portion of the castle can be rented out through the Landmark Trust.
We love staying at historic properties, including a castle AirBnB while we were in Ireland, so I can’t recommend staying here enough.
The area was really popular with the Romantic poets and artists, including writer Sir Walter Scott, poet Robert Burns and painter Andrew Nasmyth.
That’s why the castle and the chapel show up in many poems and paintings from the late 1700s into the 1800s.
There's a myth that, when a Rosslyn baron dies, the building will appear to be on fire.
While you’re in this part of the property, go for a stroll in the Roslin Glen, which is the forest surrounding the castle.
Supposedly, there are also a few ghosts roaming around the woods, including a braying dog, a grey lady, and a knight in black armor.
Luckily, we didn't run into any of the above while we were trekking around the property, but you can look while you’re there!
Beyond that, the glen is beautiful for a stroll with streams and woodland paths. Just bring some sturdy hiking shoes to make sure you don’t slip in the mud.
You can access the glen’s footpaths to the right of the castle bridge.
Tips for Visiting Rosslyn Chapel
Be ready for anything, weather-wise.
Scotland, and the British Isles as a whole, are known for their chaotic weather. It might be 60 degrees F and sunny one minute, and then 45 degrees F and pouring rain the next.
I learned quickly while studying abroad in London that I needed a light jacket and umbrella in my bag at all times, and that same advice is true here.
While you’ll be protected from the rain while you’re in the chapel, you’ll have to navigate the weather to the visitors center, between the visitors center and the chapel, and then out to the castle and Roslin Glen.
If you’re visiting in the colder months, I recommend a 3-in-1 jacket that has a waterproof shell as well as a fleece jacket. These can be worn individually or as a fleece lined raincoat on the soggiest, rainiest days.
In my many trips to the British Isles, I have always carried a 3-in-1 jacket, and it has come in handy every single time. (You can even see my jacket in my author profile, below, from when we visited the Aran Islands in Ireland!)
I have had this Columbia 3-in-1 jacket for years, and it has held up beautifully.
Wear sturdy shoes.
There’s not much even ground anywhere on the Rosslyn Chapel property other than in the visitors center.
In the area where you approach the chapel, you’ll walk across pea gravel, and then inside the chapel, there are large stone blocks that may have slick areas.
When you walk from the chapel to the castle, you’ll have an asphalt path to follow, but there are plenty of opportunities in Roslin Glen to hike.
The often muddy footpaths there won’t hold up if you’re wearing anything too flimsy or precious, and tennis shoes, hiking boots, or Chelsea boots are going to be your best bet.
Any footwear with a thick, rugged sole should work.
There’s food on-site.
If you work up an appetite while exploring Rosslyn Chapel and its surroundings, there is a small cafe in the visitors center.
It’s more of a coffee shop than a full service restaurant, but if you’re looking for a hot cup of coffee or tea, or a bowl of soup on a rainy day, the food and drink here will more than suffice.
You’ll find plenty of coffee basics, including espresso and flat whites, a pot of tea, and even Irn Bru, the orange-y tasting soft drink that’s uniquely Scottish.
If you’re visiting with kids, there’s fruit juice and hot cocoa to drink, and scones with jam or bacon rolls.
Look to see what tray bakes are available during your visit. Even though the name might sound unfamiliar to our American ears, tray bakes are sweets like brownies or blondies or anything baked in a tray and then sliced into squares before serving.
Sit inside or out, though I highly recommend the outside patio if the weather cooperates. Even on a rainy day, the huge back windows are a great place to sit by while you sip on some of the soup du jour.
If you want something hardier before or after your visit, head into the small town of Roslin, where you can get Scottish favorites at the nearby Grail Grill and Restaurant.
Enjoy fried fish and chips (what the Scottish call French fries), roast beef and mashed potatoes, salads, and other comfort food just 0.2 miles from the entrance to Rosslyn Chapel.
Bring the kids.
While Rosslyn Chapel is over 700 years old, this property is anything but stuffy.
The administration here has worked hard to ensure that everyone, no matter how young, can enjoy and learn about the property.
Kids always get in free with a paying adult, and the children’s guide is free for families.
It’s a great place to introduce history and architecture to your kids!
