St James Quarter and Princes Street: Edinburgh’s Main Shopping Guide (2026)
Edinburgh’s main shopping district is two things bolted together and pointed in opposite directions. St James Quarter, renamed Westfield St James Quarter on 10 September 2026, is a 1.7 million square foot centre opened in 2021, with a food hall, a cinema, two hotels and a rooftop bar on the twelfth floor. Princes Street is a Victorian retail street with the best view in Britain on one side and a run of chain stores and vacancies on the other. Most visitors do both without ever being told how they relate.
The official St James Quarter site owns the search term and answers the qualified questions badly — which level anything is on, when it actually opens, whether the food hall is worth it, what happened to Jenners. This guide answers those, then makes the case that the best shopping in this part of Edinburgh is on neither of them but on the four-minute pedestrian lane running between them. Hours and addresses were checked in September 2026.
At a Glance
- St James Quarter, St James Crescent, EH1 3AD. Open Monday–Saturday 09:00–20:00, Sunday 10:00–18:00. Restaurant and leisure hours differ. Tel 0131 290 1118.
- 1.7 million square feet. John Lewis anchors it.
- Bonnie & Wild’s Scottish Marketplace is on Level 4 — more than a dozen independent kitchens, bars and shops. Food served 09:00–21:00, to 21:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. Named best food hall in the UK by National Geographic.
- Everyman cinema is on the fifth floor — five screens, two bars, food and drink brought to your seat.
- W Edinburgh and Roomzzz Aparthotel both opened in 2023. The W Deck rooftop bar is on the 12th floor, 360-degree views, seasonal and entirely outdoors.
- Multrees Walk runs alongside: Scotland’s only Harvey Nichols and only Louis Vuitton, plus Johnstons of Elgin at number 11, Mulberry, Burberry and Max Mara.
- The car park is cashless, with an app for advance booking.
- Jenners is not reopening yet. Closed as a department store in December 2020, vacated May 2021, becoming a 90-bedroom hotel plus restaurants and restored retail. No confirmed reopening date.
- Princes Street reopened fully on 29 August 2026 after the July fire closure. Old warnings about it are out of date.
- No VAT refund for visitors anywhere in Great Britain — abolished 2021, and there is no refund desk at the airport.
St James Quarter Shops: Opening Hours and How It Is Laid Out
The hours first, because they are the most-searched and least-answered thing about the place.
| What | Hours |
|---|---|
| Shops, Monday–Saturday | 09:00–20:00 |
| Shops, Sunday | 10:00–18:00 |
| Bonnie & Wild food hall | Food served 09:00–21:00; to 21:30 Fri and Sat |
| Everyman cinema | Runs later than the shops — check listings |
| Restaurants and bars | Vary; several run well past the shop closing time |
| Car park | Cashless, with an app for advance booking |
The 09:00 opening is the useful one. St James Quarter opens its shops at 09:00 Monday to Saturday, which makes it the answer if you have an early train and an hour to fill, or if you want to shop before the Old Town wakes up.
The vertical layout, and why it confuses people
The thing to understand is that St James Quarter is built into a slope, so its levels do not correspond to the floors of any building you can see from outside. You can enter at what feels like ground level from three different streets and arrive on three different levels of the centre.
- Lower levels — the bulk of the fashion and general retail, plus John Lewis running through several floors as the anchor.
- Level 4 — Bonnie & Wild, the food hall. This is the level to head for if you have come to eat, and it is the level most people fail to find.
- Fifth floor — Everyman cinema, five screens with two bars.
- Twelfth floor — W Deck, in the W Edinburgh hotel, the coiled ribbon building. Rooftop bar, seasonal.
Practical: use the lifts rather than trying to walk it. The centre is tall rather than wide, and the escalator route between the shopping levels and the food hall is longer than it looks on the map.
Bonnie & Wild: Is the Food Hall Worth It?
On Level 4, more than a dozen independent kitchens, bars and shops under one roof, using Scottish producers, with food served from 09:00 to 21:00 and to 21:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. National Geographic named it the best food hall in the UK.
The honest verdict: yes, with a caveat. As a food hall it is genuinely good — the operators are independent Scottish businesses rather than chains, the range covers a real spread of price and cuisine, and it solves the problem of a group who cannot agree, which no restaurant does. As a place to eat in Edinburgh, it is competing with Leith, the Southside and the West End, and it will lose to any of them on atmosphere because it is a shopping centre and it feels like one.
Use it when the situation calls for it: a mixed group, a family, a wet afternoon, an early evening before the cinema upstairs, or the fact that you can eat at 09:00 or at 21:00 when much of Edinburgh cannot. Do not make it your one memorable Edinburgh dinner. Our Edinburgh food guide has the alternatives.
Princes Street: What It Is Now
Princes Street has the strangest geography of any shopping street in Britain: buildings on one side only, and on the other, gardens falling away to a castle on a volcanic crag. It is a genuinely spectacular street to walk along, and it is a fairly ordinary street to shop on.
What is there now is mostly national chains — clothing, phones, sportswear, pharmacies — of the kind you can find in any large British city. There are vacancies. The Johnnie Walker experience at the west end is a genuine destination, and there are some fine buildings, but the retail itself is not a reason to come to Edinburgh.
The honest verdict on Princes Street: walk it for the view and shop somewhere else. Cross to the gardens side, walk west with the castle on your left, and treat the shops as scenery. If it is raining, the same walk works through the gardens themselves. The best thing on Princes Street is the thing that is not on Princes Street.
One thing to correct: Princes Street reopened fully on 29 August 2026 after the partial closure that followed the fire of 9 July 2026. A number of pages still warn visitors about disruption. There is none.
What happened to Jenners
The question people ask most often on this street. Jenners — the great Edinburgh department store, in a listed building at the east end — closed as a department store in December 2020 and was vacated by House of Fraser in May 2021.
The building was bought in 2017 by AAA United, the vehicle of the Danish businessman Anders Holch Povlsen. Consent was granted in 2022 and construction began in 2024. The plan is a hotel of around 90 rooms plus restaurants, bars and restored retail space.
There is no confirmed reopening date. If you have read one, treat it sceptically; the dates that circulate have moved repeatedly. For now it is a building site behind a famous facade, and you cannot go in.
Multrees Walk: the Bit Everyone Walks Past
Between St Andrew Square and St James Quarter runs a short pedestrian lane that takes four minutes to walk and contains more serious retail than either of the things it connects.
- Harvey Nichols — the only one in Scotland. Its Forth Floor restaurant and bar has views to the castle and the Firth of Forth, and is one of the better free views in the city if you buy a drink.
- Louis Vuitton — also the only one in Scotland.
- Johnstons of Elgin at number 11 — founded 1797, one of Scotland’s last vertical mills. Mon–Sat 10:00–18:00, Sunday 11:00–17:00. See our guide to buying cashmere, tweed and knitwear in Edinburgh.
- Mulberry, Burberry and Max Mara, plus a run of smaller names.
The honest verdict: if you want to buy something in Edinburgh that you cannot buy at home and that was made in Scotland, Multrees Walk is where to do it — specifically at Johnstons. That is a more useful sentence than anything that can be said about the two hundred shops on either side of it.
St James Quarter vs Princes Street vs Everything Else
| Where | Best for | Avoid if |
|---|---|---|
| St James Quarter | Chains under one roof, wet weather, food hall, cinema, 09:00 opening | You want something you cannot buy at home |
| Princes Street | The view, the walk, Johnnie Walker at the west end | You came to shop |
| Multrees Walk | Luxury, and Scottish cashmere from a real mill | Your budget is under £100 |
| George and Thistle Streets | New Town independents and boutiques | You want a department store |
| Victoria Street and the Grassmarket | Old Town independents, Harris Tweed, whisky, vintage | You need a specific chain |
| Stockbridge | Charity shops, the Sunday market, books | You are short of time |
The full picture is in our complete guide to shopping in Edinburgh. For the specific question of what to bring home, see the best Scottish souvenirs and what to skip, and for a cheaper afternoon, vintage and charity shops and Edinburgh’s markets by day.
Getting There, and Where to Park
- Tram. The line runs through St Andrew Square and Picardy Place, both a minute from St James Quarter, and continues to the airport in one direction and Newhaven in the other. £2.40 for a city single; £7.90 from the airport.
- Bus. Princes Street and the streets around St Andrew Square are the densest bus interchange in Scotland. £2.40 single, with a £5.70 contactless daily cap.
- Train. Waverley station is five minutes’ walk from either.
- Car. The St James Quarter car park is cashless, with an app for advance booking, which is meaningfully cheaper than turning up. City-centre parking is otherwise expensive and difficult — see our guide to driving and parking in Edinburgh.
Our full guide to Lothian buses and trams covers ticketing and the daily caps, which are worth understanding before your third journey of the day.
The Rooftop, and What Else Is Up There
W Deck sits on the 12th floor of the W Edinburgh, the coiled ribbon building that dominates the east end of the New Town skyline and divides opinion more sharply than any building in Scotland. The view is 360 degrees: castle, Calton Hill, Arthur’s Seat, and both the Old and New Towns.
Two things to know. It is seasonal — the spring and summer 2026 season opened on Friday 3 April 2026 — and it is entirely outdoors, with no indoor space at all. In Edinburgh that is a significant constraint, and it means the bar is unavailable for much of the year and unpleasant on a fair number of the days it is open.
The year-round alternatives nearby are the Harvey Nichols Forth Floor on Multrees Walk and the 1820 rooftop bar on the seventh floor of Johnnie Walker Princes Street, both of which have indoor space. Our guide to Edinburgh’s rooftop bars covers all of them with floors, views and seasons.
If it is only the view you want, Calton Hill is five minutes’ walk away and free, and it is better than any of them. See the best views in Edinburgh.
Two Hours, Well Spent
Most people come to this district with a gap in the day rather than a shopping list, and the default — walk the length of Princes Street, go into St James Quarter, leave slightly disappointed — is the worst available use of the time. Here is a better version, and it is almost entirely on foot.
- 09:00 — into St James Quarter as it opens. Do the chains you actually need in an empty building.
- 09:45 — out of the west side and down Multrees Walk. Johnstons of Elgin at number 11 opens at 10:00 and this is the one shop in the district selling something made in Scotland.
- 10:30 — across St Andrew Square into George Street. This is the New Town’s proper shopping street and it is consistently overlooked in favour of Princes Street one block south: a wide Georgian boulevard, better shops, better cafés, and views down the cross-streets to the Forth on one side and the castle on the other.
- 11:00 — turn up Thistle Street, the narrow service lane running parallel behind George Street, for the independents: Jane Davidson and Pam Jenkins, both named by Vogue among Britain’s best boutiques, and 21st Century Kilts.
- 11:30 — back down to Princes Street on the gardens side, walking west with the castle above you, and finish at Johnnie Walker at the west end.
The honest verdict on George Street: it is the street Princes Street is assumed to be. Princes Street has the view and the tourists; George Street, one block north, has the architecture, the independents, the restaurants and almost none of the crowds. If someone gives you two hours in the New Town and tells you to go shopping, this is where to spend them. Our guide to New Town architecture explains why it looks the way it does — the grid was laid out from 1767 — and the New Town hotels guide covers staying in it.
Practical Notes
- No VAT refund. The Retail Export Scheme was abolished in 2021; there is no visitor refund in Great Britain and no desk at Edinburgh Airport. The only route is having the retailer ship to a non-UK address.
- VAT is in the displayed price. Nothing is added at the till.
- Alcohol cannot be sold in shops in Scotland before 10:00 or after 22:00 — relevant if you are buying whisky at either end of the day.
- Sunday trading is unrestricted in Scotland, so Sunday hours are normal rather than the shortened English ones.
- Busiest: Saturday afternoons, and the whole of December once the Christmas market opens in East Princes Street Gardens. Go on a weekday morning at 09:00 if you can.
- Left luggage: Waverley station is five minutes away, which is useful on a departure day.
Opening hours, addresses and tenant details checked against stjamesquarter.com and tenants’ own pages in September 2026. The Jenners redevelopment position is from planning and trade reporting; no reopening date has been confirmed. Retailer hours within the centre vary — check individual stores for anything time-critical.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are St James Quarter opening hours?
Monday to Saturday 09:00–20:00 and Sunday 10:00–18:00 for the shops. Restaurant and leisure hours differ — Bonnie & Wild serves food from 09:00 to 21:00, and to 21:30 on Fridays and Saturdays, and the Everyman cinema runs later.
What floor is Bonnie and Wild on?
Level 4 of St James Quarter. Take a lift rather than trying to walk up. Food is served 09:00–21:00, and to 21:30 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Is there a cinema at St James Quarter?
Yes — an Everyman on the fifth floor, with five screens and two bars, serving food and drink to your seat. It runs later than the shops, so check its listings rather than the centre’s opening hours if you are booking an evening screening.
Has Jenners reopened on Princes Street?
No, and no reopening date has been confirmed. Jenners closed as a department store in December 2020 and was vacated in May 2021. The listed building is being converted into a hotel of around 90 rooms with restaurants, bars and restored retail, with construction running since 2024.
Is Princes Street worth shopping on?
Not really. The retail is national chains of the kind found in any large British city, with some vacancies. What Princes Street is worth is the walk — buildings on one side, gardens and the castle on the other — and the Johnnie Walker experience at the west end. Cross to the gardens side and treat the shops as scenery.
Where can I buy something actually made in Scotland near St James Quarter?
Multrees Walk, the four-minute pedestrian lane between St Andrew Square and St James Quarter. Johnstons of Elgin at number 11 has been spinning and weaving in Scotland since 1797 and is one of the country’s last vertical mills. The lane also has Scotland’s only Harvey Nichols and only Louis Vuitton.
Is the W Deck rooftop bar open all year?
No. It is on the 12th floor of the W Edinburgh, it is seasonal — the 2026 spring and summer season opened on Friday 3 April — and it is entirely outdoors with no indoor space. In Edinburgh that is a real limitation. For year-round rooftops with indoor space, try the Harvey Nichols Forth Floor or 1820 at Johnnie Walker.
Is Princes Street still closed after the fire?
No. Princes Street reopened fully on 29 August 2026 after the partial closure that followed the fire of 9 July 2026. Several pages online still warn about disruption; there is none, and the street is operating normally.
Where to Go Next
Read our complete guide to shopping in Edinburgh for every district in one place, then cashmere, tweed and knitwear for the one purchase genuinely worth making on Multrees Walk. For cheaper afternoons, vintage and charity shops and Edinburgh’s markets by day. In December the whole area changes character — see Edinburgh’s Christmas markets — and for the view from above, the rooftop bars and Calton Hill, five minutes away and free.
