This New Town door to nowhere has long intrigued passers-by. It seemed to have no purpose. No-one ever came, no-one ever left. Only the graffiti changed.
Now, though, after years of neglect, the mysterious interior behind No. 134 Dundas Street will partially reopen to public view.
A new shop – possibly called Smoking Hot but the staff member we spoke to wasn't sure – will open either tomorrow or on Wednesday, depending upon when the last of its stock is delivered.
As mysterious interiors go, Smoking Hot’s is of the immensely long and narrow kind: approximately 46m long by 67cm wide.
Refurbished and redecorated in a cheerful combination of brown, purple and white, it stretches all the way from the Dundas Street pavement to the rear of the building, pleasantly lit towards its deserted rear by an oblong-shaped cupola.
What you can see in the photo at the foot of this page is substantially less than half of it.
We believe the corridor once offered access to back-greens for adjacent domestic flats above ground-floor level.
Those back-greens vanished first under an extension to the rear of Dundas Street, and then under another new building fronting the parallel Henderson Place.
Now, though, the premises will specialise in umpteen flavours of e-cigarettes and associated paraphernalia, PC and laptop repairs, mobile phone repairs, and the largest collection of phone covers we have seen anywhere.
If you know of a longer, thinner shop in Edinburgh, we’d like to know.
Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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This item reminds us of the Yorkshire widower who returned to his Yorkshire wife's grave in Yorkshire to inspect the new headstone. He was appalled to find it read: 'SHE WAS THIN'. He immediately phoned the Yorkshire monumental mason and told him: 'Ye've left the E out'. The mason apologised and promised to fix the problem. The widower revisited the grave a few days later and found that it now read: 'E, SHE WAS THIN'.