Edinburgh’s North Bridge is due to reopen fully this summer, bringing an end to eight years of closures and traffic restrictions during major essential renovation work on the vital link between the city’s Old and New Towns.
To mark the occasion, a new exhibition showcasing the bridge’s 130-year history has opened, combining film, historic artworks and objects uncovered during the recent restoration. Running from 18 July until 13 September 2026, the centrepiece of the exhibition is Study for North Bridge, a new film by artists Rachel McBrinn and Jonathan Webb created during the restoration works, offering a fresh perspective on one of Edinburgh’s best-known landmarks ahead of its August reopening.
Commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council as part of the North Bridge restoration programme, the film explores both the physical repair work carried out on the bridge and the broader role the structure plays in shaping the city around it. Blending real-life footage with imagined scenes, it poses questions about how today’s events become tomorrow’s history, using the voice of a fictional art historian looking back from the future to prompt visitors to consider how stories are recorded, preserved and retold over time.
The title reflects the sketches artists often produce while developing a finished work, and in keeping with that idea, the film focuses on the restoration process itself rather than the completed bridge, revealing the people, processes and hidden details that are usually out of view.
Alongside the film, the exhibition features original pieces removed from the bridge during restoration, displayed together with paintings and other artworks from the City of Edinburgh’s fine art collection depicting North Bridge across the past 300 years. A programme of guided walking tours accompanies the exhibition, beginning and ending at the City Art Centre and exploring the people, places and stories that have shaped the bridge over time, bringing the exhibition to life in the surrounding streets.
North Bridge, one of the city’s key routes connecting South Bridge and the Old Town with the New Town, has faced significant travel restrictions since 2018, affecting bus routes as well as pedestrians, with sections of pavement closed at various points during the works. The bridge is now set to be cleared of all street-level works, with both carriageways and footpaths fully back in use by the time the Edinburgh festivals begin next month.
Councillor Margaret Graham, culture and communities convener at the City of Edinburgh Council, described North Bridge as one of the city’s most important civic landmarks, having connected communities across Edinburgh for more than 130 years. She said the exhibition offers a fascinating chance to reflect not only on the engineering achievement behind the restoration, but also on the stories, memories and meanings attached to the structure, as the city looks forward to its reopening this summer.
The restoration project traces back to a routine inspection in late 2016, which discovered that water had penetrated cracks in the bridge’s concrete. Initial work to assess the scale of the problem was backed by £12m in funding aimed at securing the bridge’s long-term condition. However, the project has taken considerably longer than expected, with the final cost now estimated at around £86 million — many times the original budget.
