National Museum of Scotland: Dolly the Sheep and the Hall of Light
Why is it significant?
Along Chambers Street two museums stand shoulder to shoulder: a long Victorian palace with tall arched windows, and beside it a modern castle of golden sandstone with a round tower on the corner.
Key Facts
| Place | National Museum of Scotland: Dolly the Sheep and the Hall of Light |
|---|---|
| Address | Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.94710, -3.18930 |
| Part of Walk | Surgeons, Skeletons and Dolly the Sheep: Edinburgh's Southside of Medicine and Science |
| Generated | Generated |
Along Chambers Street two museums stand shoulder to shoulder: a long Victorian palace with tall arched windows, and beside it a modern castle of golden sandstone with a round tower on the corner. Together they make the National Museum of Scotland, and somewhere inside, behind glass, stands the most famous sheep who ever lived.
The Victorian half began as the Industrial Museum of Scotland, founded in 1854 to show off science, engineering and the natural world. Prince Albert laid its foundation stone in October 1861, only weeks before his death, and it opened in 1866. Its great hall is a cage of slender iron and glass in the spirit of the Crystal Palace, and on a bright day it fills with light like a greenhouse. The modern building beside it followed in 1998.
Now, the sheep. Dolly was born on 5 July 1996 at the Roslin Institute, a few miles south of the city, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, taken from the mammary gland of a six-year-old ewe. The scientists named her, with a wink, after the singer Dolly Parton. When her birth was announced in February 1997, newspapers around the world talked about cloned humans, and governments hurried to write new laws.
Dolly lived a sheep's life at Roslin and gave birth to six lambs of her own. In 2003, aged six, she developed a lung disease and was put to sleep, and her preserved body was given to the museum. Her real legacy is not a flock of copied sheep but the science of reprogramming cells, which feeds into research on stem cells and regenerative medicine today.
The street outside has its own story of improvement. It is named after William Chambers, publisher and Lord Provost, who drove the clearing of crowded old closes to lay it out in the 1870s, and his statue still stands in the middle. Walk west to the end of Chambers Street, turn left down Bristo Place, and in a couple of minutes you reach a wide paved square beside a great domed hall.