Description
The British Museum, in London's Bloomsbury, is a museum of the whole of human history under one roof: from Egyptian mummies to Greek temples and Assyrian palaces, some eight million objects, about 50,000 of them on show in nearly a hundred free galleries.
Founded in 1753, it was the world's first public national museum, belonging to neither church nor king. It is far too big for one visit: the best plan is to pick a few rooms and let the rest wait for next time.
The way in is already a show. Behind Robert Smirke's Greek colonnade, 14-meter Ionic columns modeled on a temple in Asia Minor, opens the Great Court, a courtyard covered by Norman Foster in 2000 with a roof of 1,656 panes of glass, each a different shape.
At its center rises the round Reading Room, 43 meters across: for almost 150 years scholars came here to consult the museum's library, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf and Gandhi among them.
The Rosetta Stone is the most famous piece: one decree carved in three scripts, the key that unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs. Upstairs, the museum's 140 mummies and coffins, the largest collection outside Cairo, are what many visitors come for.
The Parthenon sculptures, brought from Athens by Lord Elgin in 1816, fill a gallery built for them in 1938. Nearby are pieces of two Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
From Assyria come the lamassu, the human-headed winged bulls that guarded palace gates, and the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, the reliefs of a royal lion hunt from the king's palace at Nineveh.
Britain's own treasures are here too: the gold and garnets of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, an Anglo-Saxon king's grave found in 1939, and the late Roman silver of the Mildenhall Treasure. From the Pacific comes Hoa Hakananai'a, one of Easter Island's great stone statues.
It all began with a doctor who collected everything. Sir Hans Sloane filled his house with 71,000 objects, from dried plants to Egyptian antiquities, and left them to the nation for far less than they were worth.
The first home was nearly a palace. The trustees turned down Buckingham House as too expensive and badly placed; it became Buckingham Palace. The museum opened instead in Montagu House, on this very site, in 1759.
Much of the collection came with the British Empire, and some of it is still claimed back: Greece asks for the Parthenon sculptures, Nigeria for the Benin Bronzes, Egypt for the Rosetta Stone.
Don't miss
• The Great Court and the Reading Room.
• The Rosetta Stone.
• The Parthenon sculptures.
• The Egyptian mummies.
• The Sutton Hoo treasure.
Did you know?
• When the Reading Room opened in 1857, only the Pantheon in Rome had a wider dome.
• The Natural History Museum began as a part of the British Museum and split off in 1881.
Founded in 1753, it was the world's first public national museum, belonging to neither church nor king. It is far too big for one visit: the best plan is to pick a few rooms and let the rest wait for next time.
The way in is already a show. Behind Robert Smirke's Greek colonnade, 14-meter Ionic columns modeled on a temple in Asia Minor, opens the Great Court, a courtyard covered by Norman Foster in 2000 with a roof of 1,656 panes of glass, each a different shape.
At its center rises the round Reading Room, 43 meters across: for almost 150 years scholars came here to consult the museum's library, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf and Gandhi among them.
The Rosetta Stone is the most famous piece: one decree carved in three scripts, the key that unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs. Upstairs, the museum's 140 mummies and coffins, the largest collection outside Cairo, are what many visitors come for.
The Parthenon sculptures, brought from Athens by Lord Elgin in 1816, fill a gallery built for them in 1938. Nearby are pieces of two Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
From Assyria come the lamassu, the human-headed winged bulls that guarded palace gates, and the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, the reliefs of a royal lion hunt from the king's palace at Nineveh.
Britain's own treasures are here too: the gold and garnets of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, an Anglo-Saxon king's grave found in 1939, and the late Roman silver of the Mildenhall Treasure. From the Pacific comes Hoa Hakananai'a, one of Easter Island's great stone statues.
It all began with a doctor who collected everything. Sir Hans Sloane filled his house with 71,000 objects, from dried plants to Egyptian antiquities, and left them to the nation for far less than they were worth.
The first home was nearly a palace. The trustees turned down Buckingham House as too expensive and badly placed; it became Buckingham Palace. The museum opened instead in Montagu House, on this very site, in 1759.
Much of the collection came with the British Empire, and some of it is still claimed back: Greece asks for the Parthenon sculptures, Nigeria for the Benin Bronzes, Egypt for the Rosetta Stone.
Don't miss
• The Great Court and the Reading Room.
• The Rosetta Stone.
• The Parthenon sculptures.
• The Egyptian mummies.
• The Sutton Hoo treasure.
Did you know?
• When the Reading Room opened in 1857, only the Pantheon in Rome had a wider dome.
• The Natural History Museum began as a part of the British Museum and split off in 1881.