City Museum, Canongate Tolbooth, 163 Canongate, Edinburgh

The City Museum, located at 163 Canongate in Edinburgh, is a 16th-century tolbooth building that has been renovated by R H Morham in 1879 and 1884. It features a distinctive Franco-Scottish style with an irregular arrangement, including an advanced, five-storey belfry tower and a two-storey, four-bay former council chamber to the right. The building is primarily constructed of squared, coursed rubble, with some snecking in the earlier fabric.

The principal elevation showcases a full-height square-plan projection with windows at each level and a round-arched pend running beneath. The fifth floor is adorned with conical-capped bartizans featuring quatrefoil gunloops, while the tower is topped with a conical spire that has flattened broaches, louvred openings, and a weathervane finial. A timber clock with a leaded ogee roof projects from the fifth floor, supported by double-curved cast-iron brackets. There is a cast-iron railed forestair leading to the council chambers, which abuts the tower at the eastern angle. The first floor features a corbelled and finialled oriel window to the right, a deeply moulded dentiled attic cill course above, and shouldered pedimented dormers with star and thistle finials. A metal remembrance plaque is centrally located, topped with a moulded and pedimented crest panel.

Inside, the ground floor has been modernized, except for a vaulted cell to the south of the tollbooth tower. A cellar beneath the western end of the main block has small windows at street level. The first floor lobby includes a nail-studded stair-doorway. The main hall features pine panelling that was salvaged in 1954 from demolished houses in the area, along with an 18th-century fireplace with a plaster overmantle on the eastern wall. Upper rooms contain a 17th-century ceiling with painted beams. The spire and bell-chamber retain early timbers within the roof structure and bell frames.

The council chambers predominantly have 12 and 15-pane timber sash and case windows with horns. The dormer windows feature 9-pane fixed glazing with lugged upper panes. There is a broad ridge stack at the rear of the tower and an end stack to the east, along with clay cans and cast-iron rainwater goods.