The Writers' Museum

Tucked down a narrow close off the Lawnmarket, a seventeenth-century townhouse holds one of literature's strangest collections: a plaster cast of Robert Burns's skull, Sir Walter Scott's rocking horse, and the ring a Samoan chief gave Robert Louis Stevenson. The Writers' Museum celebrates Scotland's three greatest literary exports in a building that's almost as interesting as its contents — Lady Stair's House dates from 1622, though it was substantially rebuilt in 1892 in a faux-medieval style that somehow suits its eccentric cargo perfectly.

The Burns room contains his writing desk and one of only three plaster casts ever made of his skull, taken when his coffin was briefly opened in 1834. Scott's collection includes his dining table from 39 Castle Street, his chess set, and that childhood rocking horse — reminders that the man who reinvented Scottish identity was also a deeply sentimental father and homemaker. Stevenson's section has his riding boots from the South Pacific, where he spent his final years in Samoa, worshipped by islanders who called him "Tusitala" — teller of tales.

Lady Stair's Close itself is worth the visit. The narrow passage threading between tall stone walls is one of the Royal Mile's most atmospheric approaches, and the small courtyard where the museum entrance sits feels removed from the tourist bustle just metres away. Literary quotations from Scottish writers are embedded in the paving stones of the courtyard, forming a "Makars' Court" (makar being Scots for poet).

The museum became the Writers' Museum in 1962, and it's free to enter — a rare bargain for three centuries of literary genius compressed into a few beautiful rooms. Most visitors to the Royal Mile walk straight past the close without noticing. That's rather the point.