British Museum

Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG. (Open Map)
(75)

Description

The British Museum in Bloomsbury is one of the oldest and greatest museums in the world, with over six million visitors every year. Through its vast collection of artifacts, art, and antiquity, visitors can explore and learn about how England sees the world today. The museum is home to several must-see attractions such as the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, the Etruscan, Greek, Roman, European, Asian and Islamic galleries, the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial relics, and the winged bulls from Khorsabad. The museum started with a "cabinet of curiosities" sold to the nation by Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, and the Enlightenment Gallery was the first section of the redesigned museum to be built in 1823. The Great Court, with its spectacular glass-and-steel roof designed by Norman Foster in 2000, contains the Reading Room, where Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and Mahatma Gandhi all had a card. With so much to explore, the British Museum is Britain's most visited attraction.