National Museum of Scotland

A merger

Two museums were joined in 2006

The National Museum of Scotland was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum. The two connected buildings stand beside each other on Chambers Street. In 2025 the museum received 2,318,305 visitors, making it Scotland's most popular visitor attraction.

A Victorian hall

The old building has a cast-iron hall that rises its full height

The former Royal Museum building was begun in 1861 and partially opened in 1866, with a Victorian Venetian Renaissance facade and a grand central hall of cast iron construction that rises the full height of the building, designed by Francis Fowke and Robert Matheson.

2011

In 2011 sixteen galleries reopened, 80 percent of the objects new to display

The old building reopened on 29 July 2011 after a three-year restoration. The sixteen new galleries reopened in 2011 include 8,000 objects, 80% of which were not previously on display.

8,000objects in the sixteen galleries reopened in 2011

Dolly

Dolly the sheep is here, and so is an early beheading machine

One of the more notable exhibits is the stuffed body of Dolly the sheep, the first successful cloning of a mammal from an adult cell. A Scottish invention on display is the Scottish Maiden, an early beheading machine predating the French guillotine. There is also a large kinetic sculpture named the Millennium Clock.

A cabinet

The collection began in 1697 as a gift to a university

In 1697 Robert Sibbald presented the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine with a natural history collection, put on permanent display as one of the first museums in the UK. In 1737 Daniel Defoe called it a fine Musæum, or Chamber of Rarities.