People's Story Museum

The People’s Story Museum sits in the Canongate Tolbooth, a historic building in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Its displays tell the everyday lives of working-class people from the late 1700s to today. Oral histories, letters and memories bring these stories to life. The museum holds Britain’s largest collection of early reform flags and banners. Among them are banners for political change, trade unions and the fight against apartheid. Wax figures recreate scenes from Edinburgh’s past so visitors can see how people once lived and worked. Three galleries guide visitors through different eras. The first shows how families lived in crowded tenement homes in the 18th century. The second gallery displays many of the museum’s banners alongside waxworks of 20th-century citizens. These figures and stories recall the struggles and achievements of ordinary Edinburgh people. The final gallery covers the mid- to late-20th century, showing how the city and its workers changed. A small screening room runs a film featuring four local people who describe their lives in printing, building, co-ops and service. Visitors walk through rooms that feel like stepping into the past. The tenement gallery shows cramped kitchens and shared closes. Banners hang in the second room, each with its own tale of protest or pride. Wax figures stand in workshops, shops and homes, dressed in period clothes. The last gallery has tools, posters and photographs from more recent decades. The film adds personal voices to the objects on display. The museum makes history feel immediate, not just dates and names.