The council is currently based in Edinburgh City Chambers with a main office nearby at Waverley Court.

The town council of the burgh was granted the right to appoint its own sheriff by James III in a charter dated 16 November 1482.

[17] The council continues to meet in the Edinburgh City Chambers and also holds and maintains properties from the days of the corporation, such as Lauriston Castle (which is used to host the Lord Provost's garden party), the Assembly Rooms and the Church Hill Theatre.

Due to an increase in the city's population, five extra seats on the council were added in 2017, along with some minor ward boundary changes.

The landscape changes to farmland, much of which is designated as green belt, at the north-western and western edge of the main urban area (beyond the River Almond, Cammo estate, West Craigs and Gogar within the Almond ward), and the council area extends around 4 miles (6.4 km) further west from the urban area, taking in the hamlets of Ingliston and Turnhouse adjacent to Edinburgh Airport, the separate villages of Kirkliston, Newbridge, Ratho Station, and the small town of South Queensferry beside the Forth Bridges.

[25][26] South of this, the Pentland Hills ward has a similar semi-rural profile: its furthest point is over 7 miles (11 km) from the A720, and Wester Hailes is its only component neighbourhood within the bypass.

However, aside from the village of Ratho and Riccarton (location of Heriot-Watt University), the increasingly distant suburbs in this area along the A70 road – Baberton, Juniper Green, Currie and Balerno – are considered to be part of the locality of Edinburgh as their postcodes remain in a 'chain' with the rest of the city.

[27] In contrast to the hinterland in the west, the local authority boundary with East Lothian in the east of the city (north of the end of the bypass within the Portobello/Craigmillar ward) is at the Brunstane Burn at Eastfield; the adjoining town of Musselburgh, and Wallyford beyond, are not within the council borders of Edinburgh, but are considered part of the Edinburgh settlement (urban area).

A Tolbooth is the main municipal building of a Scottish burgh providing council meeting chambers, a court house and a jail.

The Tolbooth had fallen into a state of disrepair by the 1560s, and was cramped, housing both the expanding Town Council of Edinburgh, and the Parliament of Scotland.

The former location of the Old Tolbooth (fully demolished in 1817) is now marked by the Heart of Midlothian, a heart-shaped sett in the paving of Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

The only remaining part of the Old Tolbooth is a door which Walter Scott recovered and added to his home Abbotsford.

[30] After the Canongate suburb merged into the city of Edinburgh in 1856, and the Canongate Tolbooth was abandoned, the north range of the Royal Exchange became too crowded once again and in 1893 the Council bought back the rest of the old Royal Exchange building and renamed it as the Edinburgh City Chambers.

[33] The council has been at the centre of several corruption scandals in recent years, including allegations of possible fraud, wrong-doing and incompetence in the Property Conservation Department in the BBC Scotland documentary Scotland's Property Scandal in 2011;[34] four men pleading guilty to corruption in the allocation of public building work contracts at the Council in 2015;[35] and mis-spending of £400,000 of public money, and a subsequent bullying campaign against the whistleblower who brought this corruption to light in 2021.