Even after being released for almost a decade, Skyrim still has plenty of secrets in store for hardcore fans. The Elder Scrolls series has always been fantastic at housing secrets and obscure quests for players to discover, but few have done it as well as Skyrim has.

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Hidden insignias are on nearly every building. NPCs have routine schedules that they follow, even when the player is not observing them. Skyrim is a game that is dynamic and filled with details. The cities share this quality as well, containing plenty of details players can miss. Here are the 10 most interesting hidden details in Skyrim's cities.

10 Vendor Chests

When you purchase or sell items to any vendor in Skyrim, it has to go somewhere. You would think it would be on the vendor themselves right? No, as killing them doesn't give you their wares.

So where are all of the shopkeepers' inventories? In a chest that's under the map. If you can glitch out of a city, you can run under the map and find an interactive chest. It contains every vendor item in that city! Sell all of your gear to a vendor then glitch under the map to require your gear. This is patched in the unofficial patch mods for Skyrim.

9 Dawnstar's Recurring Nightmares

Skyrim Dawnstar Tower

Many of the NPCs at Dawnstar will tell the player that they have a hard time going to sleep, mainly because they have frequent nightmares.

Those nightmares aren't a coincidence. Vaermina, the Daedric god of dreams and fear, is siphoning people's dreams and turning them into nightmares. Players can join a priest of Mara and solve this issue in the "Waking Nightmare" questline, revealing that the nightmares are coming from a tower that overlooks the small city.

8 Falkreath's Graveyard

Falkreath is one of the smallest major holds in Skyrim, housing a small population and even fewer quests. However, the atmosphere of this zone provokes is unrivaled.

One of the first things players can see when entering is Falkreath's graveyard. Honorable residents that protected the hold from bandits and monsters are all buried here. It is the largest graveyard in Skyrim, with so many bodies residing here that the Hall of the Dead is a dedicated living space for caretakers of the Graveyard instead of housing additional remains. Various mods exist to increase the size of the graveyard, making it closer to what NPCs portray it as.

7 Thieves Guild Shadowmarks

Skyrim-Shadowmark

Every town and city in Skyrim has shadowmarks in it. Shadowmarks are insignias carved onto buildings to tell fellow Thieves Guild members if the house is safe or contains loot.

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You can find these everywhere. They are at inns, houses, stores, and escape routes. There are books dedicated to reading these symbols. Players who find them can learn what each symbol means, allowing them to gain some information on a particular building without even having to enter it. This small attention to detail is what makes Skyrim so special compared to other RPGs.

6 Winterhold's Great Collapse

Skyrim Winterhold Air Shot

Winterhold is arguably the smallest major city in Skyrim, containing maybe a dozen characters before including the College of Winterhold. It wasn't always this way, however.

Before the events of Skyrim, Winterhold was a large city that housed many buildings and citizens. Then the Great Collapse happened. The Sea of Ghosts, or the sea surrounding northern Tamriel, became alive and wiped out nearly the entirety of Winterhold. A few buildings survived alongside the College. Skeptics believe that the College caused the disaster or could have prevented it due to its survival of the cataclysmic event.

Fans of Oblivion or Morrowind might notice that Solitude is a heavily Imperial themed city, right down to its architecture and citizens.

What fans might not know, however, is that most of the Jarls of Solitude are connected to Tiber Septim's bloodline. The notable hero who unified the entirety of Tamriel had many descendants to look after each province of Tamriel. Fans learn this from one of the loading screen subtexts seen when loading the game or any area.

4 Whiterun's Temple of Kynareth

Many don't get to the Cloud District very often, but even those that do—like Nazeem—might not know this next fact. Whiterun has the only Kynarteh temple in the entire province.

Go to every city in Skyrim and try to find a temple dedicated to Kynareth. You won't find one. The reason for this is the giant tree that grows in the middle of Whiterun. This Gildergreen tree is the main reason the temple exists. Its massive size is representative of Kynareth's importance to the Nine Divines and her restorative nature.

3 Riften's Closed Gate

There are many entrances to enter and exit Riften from, one of Skyrim's largest cities. What is strange, however, is how one of them is boarded up with no explanation.

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According to the official Skyrim game guide, bandit attacks and casualties resulted in this gate getting boarded up. Leading to the Morrowind border, this gate is near multiple bandit camps and an entire continent that saw its mountain erupt. Violence is likely to ensue, meaning this gate likely will not be fixed anytime soon.

2 Windhelm's Cut Arena

Did you know that Skyrim was to have arenas for each major hold players could fight in, similar to the one in Oblivion? Did you know there are still remains of one in Windhelm?

The Windhelm Pit was supposed to be an arena the Dragonborn could enter if they were arrested in Windhelm. Instead of rotting away in jail, players could choose to instead fight in The Pit with little gear against others. If they won, they got to leave. If they failed, well, they wouldn't be alive to tell of their failure. Players on PC can use console commands to enter the cut area. Try it yourself! Type "coc WindhelmPitEntrance" into the console and you'll load into this cut area.

1 Markarth is the Safest City in Skyrim

Skyrim-Markarth (1) Cropped

Guards are meant to keep any city safe, but the ones that are stationed in Markarth are not messing around. They frequently mention how Markarth is the safest city in Skyrim, and they are objectively right.

Think about it. Dragons never attack the city. Hired thugs can not spawn inside of the city. The guard population in Markarth is some of the highest in Skyrim. Vampires rarely get inside, but guards immediately take care of them instead of having to get close to them first. Guards typically say inconsequential lines of dialogue to the player, but this is one of the few times where they are actually right in what they say. There is no safer city in Skyrim than Markarth.

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