Its rooms have been described as a cross between a bordello and an explosion in a tartan factory.

The Witchery is also said to be haunted by a woman who was burned at the stake for witchcraft years ago.

I didn’t see or smell her and the fire alarm and smoke detectors certainly didn’t go off if she was padding about during the night.

The decor is anything but subtle.

The Witchery by the Castle in Edinburgh was opened by chef and restaurateur James Thompson, who, fearing he had been born into the wrong time and class, gave a 16th-century merchant’s house an eccentric, incredibly OTT and very self-indulgent makeover.

It mixes Scottish baronial baroque and flamboyantly creepy but gentrified Gothic style, with more than a little camp thrown in for good measure.

It’s all very Pugin, deliberately decadent, elaborately kitsch and self-consciously unconventional.

And great fun.

The Witchery is not a typical hotel. Reached via a narrow passage called Boswell’s Court and up a turnpike stone stairway , the tenement building right beside Edinburgh Castle dates back to 1595.

The former Satanists’ meeting place also organises tours exploring the supernataural, grisly and sadistic side of Edinburgh

It offers seven premium-priced suites. You aren’t asked whether you prefer smoking or non-smoking. Instead, you choose whether you want an organ pipe headboard. Or gilded empire furniture. Or velvet or tartan or paisley-lined walls. Or would you rather your walls be leather-panelled.

You can have either three windows or seven looking out on to the Old Town rooftops, Prince’s Street and the Forth of Fife.

You can sleep the night in the ‘Guardroom’ or the ‘Armoury’, as well as the library, which Australian singer Danni Minogue described as “a lust den”.

The unique accommodation has an award-winning restaurant serving, under its heraldic painted ceiling and surrounded by A-listed stonework, Scrabster monkfish, Isle of Mull cheddar scones and scallops, Oban oysters, Arran beets, Scotch border beef and lots of Scottish salmon. 2015 is Scottish Year of Food and Drink.

At the Witchery you have breakfast by candlelight. You can also bathe in a chapel.

The room is cluttered with tasselled damask curtains and bric a brac. Military uniforms are casually draped over chairs.

It is the only hotel where you can go to bed in a Busby, which gives an entirely new meaning to “the night-cap”.

The Witchery, a former Satanists’ meeting place, you are told tongue-in-cheek, also organises tours exploring the supernataural, grisly and sadistic side of the burgh, following in the footsteps of cadies, grave robbers and stranglers. Your escort is the Chief-In-Spectre.

The Witchery’s sister hotel is five-star boutique baronial Prestonfield House, dating from 1687, which is equally decadent in decor although equipped with concessions to modernity such as Wi-Fi and mood-adjusting lighting.

The trouser presses are a bit outré but the boudoir-like rooms overlooking Arthur’s Seat and Royal Holyrood Park are a defiant challenge to the bland uniformity of most hotels.

• For details contact The Witchery by the Castle, Castlehill , The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 1NE, call 031 225 5613 or visit www.thewitchery.com.