The Hunterian is Scotland's oldest public museum, founded in 1807 on the collections of William Hunter — a Scottish physician who spent his career in London accumulating one of the great private collections of the 18th century. Hunter bequeathed everything to Glasgow University, and the result is an extraordinary miscellany: Roman coins, dinosaur fossils, ethnographic material from Captain Cook's voyages, medical specimens, and the world's second-largest collection of coins and medals.
The main museum is in the University's Gilbert Scott Building on Gilmorehill. The adjacent Hunterian Art Gallery holds the Mackintosh House (described separately) and an excellent collection of 17th-century Dutch painting, Whistler's butterfly prints, and works by the Scottish Colourists — Peploe, Fergusson, Hunter, and Cadell. Both are free.