Edinburgh has more museums per head of population than any city in the UK outside London, and the best of them, the National Museum of Scotland, the Scottish National Gallery, the Writer’s Museum, and the Surgeons’ Hall Museums, are free (the Surgeons’ Hall is the exception, and the £8 entry is the best £8 you will spend in the city). The Edinburgh museum is a particular kind of pleasure: the small, the specialist, and the slightly eccentric. The Writer’s Museum on the Lawnmarket (the former home of the 17th-century Lady Stair’s Close, the collection of the personal effects of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, Scott’s writing desk, Burns’s writing desk, and Stevenson’s riding boots, the boots he wore in Samoa, the most intimate connection to the author of Treasure Island in existence. Free, and the 30 minutes you spend in the three rooms are the most charming 30 minutes in Edinburgh), the Surgeons’ Hall (the 1832 museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, the anatomical specimens, the pathology collection, and the pocketbook made from the skin of the murderer William Burke, the Burke and Hare murders, the 1828 killing spree that provided cadavers for the Edinburgh anatomy schools, and the most macabre and fascinating object in Scotland. ~£8, and the essential museum experience in Edinburgh), and the National Museum of Scotland (the Chambers Street museum, the Grand Gallery, the Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, and the Lewis Chessmen, the 12th-century walrus-ivory chess pieces found on the Isle of Lewis, the most beautiful and mysterious objects in Scotland. Free, and the 2 hours you spend in the museum are the best free 2 hours in the city). Here is your guide to exploring the world in Edinburgh’s museums.

Edinburgh’s Essential Museums

• The National Museum of Scotland, the world in a building: The National Museum occupies two buildings connected by a soaring modern atrium: the original Victorian museum (the Grand Gallery, the iron columns, the glass roof, and the sense of being inside a cathedral of science) and the modern extension (the galleries, the café, and the view of the castle from the top-floor terrace). The essential galleries: the Kingdom of the Scots (the history of Scotland, the Iron Age to the Union of 1707, the Pictish stones, the Mary Queen of Scots jewels, and the Declaration of Arbroath, the 1320 letter to the Pope asserting Scottish independence), the Natural World (the animals, the dinosaurs, and the giant T. rex skeleton, the most popular exhibit in the museum, the queue of children, and the roar), and the World Cultures (the Lewis Chessmen, the 78 pieces, 11 in the National Museum, 67 in the British Museum, the most beautiful and most disputed objects in the collection). Free. Allow 2–3 hours. The top-floor terrace, the view of the castle, the Old Town, and the Firth, is the best free view in Edinburgh. More UK →
• The Scottish National Gallery, the art: The National Gallery on the Mound, the neoclassical temple between the Old and the New Towns, holds the national collection of European painting: the Raphael, the Titian, the Rembrandt, the Vermeer, and the Scottish painters (Raeburn, Wilkie, and the Glasgow Boys, the most important collection of Scottish art in the world). The essential paintings: the Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Sir Henry Raeburn (the most famous painting in Scotland, the minister gliding across the ice, the portrait, the landscape, and the sense of the Scottish Enlightenment captured in a single image), the Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (the stag, the mist, and the most famous painting of the Scottish Highlands. The portrait is a cliché and a masterpiece, and the experience of standing before it, the size, the detail, and the sense of the 19th-century romanticisation of the Highlands, is more moving than you expect), and the Tiepolo, the Poussin, and the Turner. Free. Allow 1–2 hours. The café, the view of Princes Street Gardens, is the best museum café in Edinburgh
• The hidden museums, the secret Edinburgh: The Museum of Edinburgh: the 16th-century Huntly House on the Canongate, the collection of Edinburgh’s civic history, and the collar and bowl of Greyfriars Bobby (the Skye terrier who guarded the grave of his owner for 14 years, the most famous dog in Edinburgh history, and the most-loved object in the museum). Free, and the 45 minutes you spend in the museum are the best introduction to the city. The People’s Story: the Canongate Tolbooth, the 1591 building that was a prison, a courthouse, and a meeting place, now the museum of the working people of Edinburgh, the trade unions, the tenements, the everyday lives of the Edinburgh that existed below the tourist city. Free, and the most unexpected museum in the city. The Georgian House: the National Trust property on Charlotte Square, the restored 18th-century townhouse, the servants’ quarters, the drawing rooms, and the sense of the life of the New Town in the age of the Enlightenment. ~£10, and the most beautiful house in Edinburgh