The collection focuses on the history, culture, crafts, trades, and the people of Edinburgh, but also maintains a place to explore more contemporary issues, events and opinions. The museum displays recreate scenes of daily life, from work, home and leisure: from a bookbinder’s workshop and wartime kitchen, to tea rooms and jail cells. Housed in the Canongate Tollbooth, a Royal Mile landmark built in 1591, the building itself had numerous incarnations including conducting burgh affairs, collecting taxes and as a jail.

All of the museum’s displays are drawn from the words and ephemera of Edinburgh’s people, taken from oral history reminiscences and written sources, to tell real stories.