The Edinburgh closes are the most unique characteristic elements of the city’s townscape. They are habitually thought of as hidden, narrow and dark transition spaces and multiple studies on the city have predominantly taken a socio-historical approach to their examination. But how does a stranger, somebody with a completely different way of seeing, explore them and how can this provide a lens to look at them differently? My dissertation attempts to interrupt the way of thinking about the experience of Edinburgh’s closes and the city by looking at them through the ideas presented in Georgi Gospodinov’s book The Physics of Sorrow and Theodore Ushev’s animated film under the same name. By rethinking the idea of the labyrinth and the Minotaur, the two sources open possibilities for a new way of understanding of the city. Following the methodologies of studying the city by Kevin Lynch and Gordon Cullen, the dissertation proposes a rereading of their classical works for the study of urban form. The dissertation demonstrates the potential of the closes as an urban form and how individual memories of other places, experiences of newcomers to the city could inform a new way to study Edinburgh.