Edinburgh Museums and Galleries

The oldest gallery of the five that go to make up The National Galleries of Scotland, The National is situated on The Mound in the heart of Edinburgh. This beautiful building is home to an internationally-renowned collection of works by Bassano, Van Dyck, El Greco, Velazquez and Boticelli among many others.

One of the real pleasures in Edinburgh is a walk along the sylvan Water of Leith to the modern art gallery. Home to an ever-changing selection of work from its permanent collection of modern masterpieces, the Gallery is the place to see Bonnard, Matisse, Leger, Picasso, Bacon, Hockney and the Scottish Colourists. A regularly changing temporary exhibition programme makes every visit a unique pleasure.

Situated just across the beautifully sculptured lawns of the modern art gallery lies The Dean, created to house Eduardo Paolozzi's eclectic works. The gallery also features a wealth of touring exhibitions and works from the National Galleries of Scotland permanent collection.

A gallery dedicated to portraiture through the ages, this gallery represents a unique visual history of Scotland. Home to a priceless permanent collection, the Gallery also plays host to regular touring exhibitions.

Built in the shell of the former Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon's School, the Gallery provides purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities to enable exhibitions of the most delicate works of art from the Royal Collection to be shown in Scotland for the first time.

The Gallery hosts a programme of changing exhibitions from the Royal Collection, focusing primarily on works from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

Home to the city's collection of Scottish art, the City Arts Centre is also one of Scotland's leading temporary exhibition spaces, playing host to many big international shows.

Edinburgh is blessed with a very strong portfolio of private art galleries. Featuring work for sale by everyone from cutting edge conceptual artists to landscape painters, the following galleries are just a small selection of the riches that await you. You can also check out edinburgh-galleries.co.uk for information on some of Edinburgh's other private galleries.

This one street has enough commercial art galleries to fill the national collections and includes the prestigious Scottish Gallery(scottish-gallery.co.uk) and the contemporary Open Eye Gallery (openeyegallery.co.uk). And if the art doesn't sate you, check out Glass & Thompson, a fab deli and coffee shop.

Leading-edge contemporary galleries Two of the most highly regarded are the Ingelby Gallery (ingelbygallery.com), housed in a beautiful Georgian townhouse, and Doggerfisher (doggerfisher.com), a brilliant space converted from a New Town garage.