National Museum of Scotland. The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum, with collections covering science and technology, natural history, and world cultures.
The two connected buildings stand beside each other on Chambers Street, by the intersection with the George IV Bridge, in central Edinburgh. The museum is part of National Museums Scotland.
Admission is free. The two buildings retain distinctive characters: the Museum of Scotland is housed in a modern building opened in 1998, while 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.
This building underwent a major refurbishment and reopened on 29 July 2011 after a three-year, E47 million project to restore and extend the building led by Gareth Hoskins Architects along with the concurrent redesign of the exhibitions by Ralph Appelbaum Associates. The National Museum incorporates the collections of the former National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.
As well as the national collections of Scottish archaeological finds and medieval objects, the museum contains artefacts from around the world, encom