Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Edinburgh Thistle Chapel inside St Giles' Cathedral (1/2)

 

Beauty on the ceiling, an intricate carved design of stones. That was even before we stepped into the Thistle Chapel. It was just a small chapel inside the St Giles' Cathedral, and was not often open. So I considered myself lucky to be able to visit it on my very first try! Truth be told, I wasn't having high expectation of it after reading so many disappointing experience from the travel forum. So let me take you inside for a look :)

Above is the entrance to the Thistle Chapel. As you can see, hardly two person could walk in together! It was so narrow, and inside so small! Yet this was the highlight of my visit to St Giles' Cathedral!

A look inside. Madness! It looked like candles were lighted everywhere illuminating the small room! They are not. Those are not candles, but warm yellow lighting from lamps inside. But everything inside was either made of wood or stone, so everything reflected light, which made the whole chapel shine as it does.

If you look up, and you always have to look up inside churches where the heavens are, there are some stained glass surrounding it, and the center pieces was a similar but larger pieces of stone carving. I guess these are Thistle? The national flower of Scotland. How beautiful.

Here is a full view of the ceiling of thisle! They actually kinda looked like skulls to me. Maybe that's why I find the design so cool!

The sides of the wall were all made of wood and well polished! And on them were more symbols and plaques. The room was pretty small, and I think visitors are advice to keep their visit short during peak hours. But since this was almost evening time, no one came and chase us out. There was a tour guide there with his group, so we kinda got some free info from the him during our visit.

He talked about the tall sharp like structure all around the chapel and how each of them held something significant to Scotland. Since the item were so high up, and rather small, it was hard to capture a good photo of them. I'm gonna bet you could probably read up more about it in the internet.

Here is a selfie of us inside Thistle Chapel with the lovely small cross behind us :)  I could have taken a grander background, given everything inside the chapel was over the top beautiful, but I think this simple background reflects us more, and knowing that it was taken inside this lovely chapel was enough for me to be happy :)