Maps and images
Maps and images can help you get a better idea of where and how your family lived.
Maps
Visit the Edinburgh and Scottish Collection to see maps of Edinburgh and Scotland from the 15th century to today.
Maps can show you how places have changed over time. Use them to see where your ancestors lived even if the area no longer exists today. They are useful for tracing the history of your house and what was there before it was built.
Images
Visit the Edinburgh and Scottish Collection to see over 155,000 images of Edinburgh and Scotland from the 15th century onwards. These include
- drawings
- paintings
- photographs
- engravings
- postcards.
Search for images by
- artist
- place
- street
- building
- person's name.
Images can help you to see where people lived, what clothes they wore and give you an impression of the times they lived in.
View over 20,000 pictures from Central Library's collections online at and thousands more on the online community archive, .
Explore , our interactive web resource which brings historic pictures, maps and stories of Edinburgh together.