Edinburgh is famed for its castles and monuments, but what struck me most was something far humbler—the People’s Story Museum. While the city’s grand fortresses speak of power, this small space celebrates those who truly shaped the city: ordinary people, their work, struggles, and joys.

The museum brings these lives vividly alive through life-size wax models, everyday objects, large pictures, posters, flags, and stories in text. As I moved through its rooms, I was struck by the depth of Edinburgh’s social history. I learned about the Incorporations, medieval craft guilds of shoemakers, weavers, masons, and candle-makers, where apprentices laboured for years but rarely rose beyond inherited privilege. I saw the hierarchy of tenement life: lawyers’ families on the upper floors, porters in damp basements, and the poorest men sleeping on stairwells. Chains in dingy prison cells recalled harsh justice, while accounts of riots, meal mobs, and the fight for the vote revealed how deeply people longed for dignity and fairness.

What touched me most were the personal details: women coal-bearers bent under impossible loads, fisherwomen, washerwomen and maids working to exhaustion, families crammed into one room with no running water even in the 1960s. These stories revealed how much life has changed—and how easily we forget the lives that built the cities we now enjoy.

As I left, I realised this museum is not only about memory but also responsibility. It insists that a city’s beauty must not blind us to the struggles that made it possible. Every city should create such a space—not as a quiet corner of history, but as a living reminder of resilience and injustice. India, too, needs museums that give voice to labourers, women, and migrants whose stories remain hidden. Edinburgh’s People’s Story shows us that true progress begins when we honour the common people.

Ronodeb Paul is a documentary filmmaker based in Kolkata who loves to focus on people’s lives, histories, and untold stories.