What is it? Scotland’s premier museum of natural and anthropological history.
Why go? The big daddy of Edinburgh museums is an eye-catching mix of old and new: the main hall, a grand, airy space ringed by balconies across three storeys, dates from 1866, while the more modern sandstone section was opened in 1998. Its contents, too, are wide-ranging: from dinosaur skeletons, Egyptian sarcophagi and Tibetan prayer wheels in the old galleries to artefacts from Scottish history in the new wing.