★ Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe

01Por que importa

The Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world and the principal marketplace for English-language comedy and new theatre: careers begin here, work made here transfers to London and New York, and the industry attends in force in the first fortnight. The International Festival supplies the other half of the argument - it is where the orchestras, opera companies and international theatre-makers touring the European summer make their British stop, and its programming has real weight. In our reading, what distinguishes Edinburgh from every other festival in this calendar is that its central mechanism is open. There is no jury, no invitation and no selection for the Fringe; the barrier is money and stamina rather than approval, which is both its founding virtue and its recurring problem, since the cost of mounting a Fringe run and finding a bed in August has risen faster than the returns. For a visitor the consequence is that Edinburgh is the least gate-kept event of the international season: a large share of the programme costs less than a cinema ticket and some of it is free.

02A semana ao seu redor

August turns Edinburgh into a different city. The Old Town from the Castle down the Royal Mile to Holyrood is effectively pedestrian and packed from noon to midnight; George Square, Bristo Square and the Meadows carry temporary venues, bars and marquees; the New Town is quieter but its restaurants are full. Traffic in the centre is slow and the buses divert. The first fortnight is the industry period, when the awards are judged and the producers, agents and programmers are in town; the second is broader and more relaxed. The Tattoo on the castle esplanade runs most evenings and adds its own crowd movement at half past ten. Two things are worth knowing. First, the whole calendar of Scottish August sits inside this - the Book Festival, the Art Festival and the film festival all run concurrently. Second, the city empties abruptly: on the first of September the venues come down and Edinburgh is a quiet capital again within a week.

03Quando chegar

Four or five nights is the minimum that makes sense; three is a frustrating sample. Come in the second week if you want the International Festival's best-attended concerts and a Fringe programme that has settled and been reviewed, or in the first if you want to see things before anyone has decided about them. Weekends are the busiest and the hardest for tickets and tables. Build in a morning off - the pace defeats people who try to see five shows a day for a week - and use it for Arthur's Seat, the Water of Leith or the National Galleries, all of which are free and empty at nine in the morning.

04Onde se hospedar

The Old Town around the Royal Mile, the Grassmarket and Southside puts you inside the Fringe and within walking distance of nearly every venue, at the cost of noise until the small hours. The New Town, north of Princes Street, is ten to twenty minutes' walk, quieter, and where most of the city's hotels are - George Street, Charlotte Square and the Balmoral at the east end of Princes Street are the landmarks. Stockbridge and Bruntsfield are residential, pleasant and twenty to thirty minutes on foot. Leith, on the water two miles north, has grown a serious restaurant scene and is a short tram or bus ride. In August, availability rather than preference usually decides: much of the city's short-let stock is taken by performers and companies for the month, and prices across all categories rise sharply.

05Acesso e hospitalidade

The two festivals sell separately. The International Festival publishes its programme and opens booking in the spring through its own box office, with priority for its members and friends; the Fringe publishes its programme in June and sells through the Festival Fringe Society's site and box office, with most venues also selling directly at the door. Fringe pricing runs from free upward - the Free Fringe and pay-what-you-want strands are a substantial part of the programme - and a large majority of shows can be booked on the day. The International Festival's opening events and its cheapest concert seats are the accessible end of that programme. Neither organization runs a hospitality tier in the sense used elsewhere in this calendar; the International Festival has patron and friends schemes with priority booking and receptions, and the Fringe Society has a supporters programme. No prices are quoted here because the 2027 programmes had not been published.

06Onde ocorre a actividade social

The Royal Mile between noon and six is the public heart of the Fringe: street performance, flyering and queues, free to anyone standing on it. The venue courtyards are the social centres after dark - the Pleasance Courtyard, the Underbelly and Assembly bars at George Square and Bristo Square, and the late bar at the Traverse, which is where the theatre industry drinks. In the Old Town, the Cowgate and the Grassmarket run late; in the New Town, the George Street bars and hotel lounges take the International Festival crowd after concerts. Nothing about any of this requires an invitation, and the courtyards are the reason people who have no tickets at all still come to Edinburgh in August.

07Como chegar

08Aspectos práticos

09Histórico

The International Festival was founded in 1947 by Rudolf Bing, then general manager of Glyndebourne, with civic backers who wanted a European cultural gathering in a city that had not been bombed, at a moment when Salzburg and much of the continent lay in ruins. Eight theatre companies who had not been invited turned up anyway and performed on the edges of it; the critic Robert Kemp called them the festival's fringe the following year and the name stuck. The Festival Fringe Society was formed in 1958 to publish a programme and sell tickets without ever selecting who appeared - the open-access constitution that still governs it. The Fringe overtook the International Festival in scale during the 1980s as comedy became its dominant form and the large venue operators built their multi-room complexes. The Book Festival followed in 1983, the Art Festival in 2004. The Fringe's 80th edition falls in 2027.

10Quem está presente

Performers and companies, who number in the tens of thousands and are a large part of the August population; the comedy and theatre industry - agents, producers, broadcasters, programmers and critics - concentrated in the first fortnight; the International Festival's own audience of concert and opera-goers, older and more international; students and young audiences, for whom the Fringe is affordable in a way almost nothing else in this calendar is; and a very large general public from across Britain and abroad. It is the broadest and least stratified audience of any event in the international season.