The British Museum is one of the most important museums in the world and the most visited in the UK, with more than six million visitors a year. Its collections, some eight million objects, tell the story of humanity from prehistory to the present, across every continent. And entry is free.
History
The museum was founded in 1753 by Act of Parliament, which purchased the collections of the physician and naturalist Hans Sloane: books, manuscripts, coins, plants and curiosities. It opened to the public in 1759 at Montagu House in Bloomsbury, the first national public museum in the world, open free to "all studious and curious persons". The growth of the collections, fed by archaeological expeditions and the expansion of the empire, required a new building: the great neoclassical edifice with its Ionic colonnade was designed by Robert Smirke and built between 1823 and 1852. An Italian, the Modenese exile Antonio Panizzi, ran its library and conceived the famous circular Reading Room, opened in 1857, where Karl Marx, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf studied. In 2000 the architect Norman Foster covered the central courtyard with a glass and steel roof, creating the Great Court, the largest covered square in Europe.
Masterpieces not to miss
- The Rosetta Stone (196 BC): the decree inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek that allowed Champollion to decipher Egyptian writing. It is the museum's most visited object.
- The Parthenon sculptures: the friezes, metopes and pediment statues brought to London by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century. Greece has sought their return for decades, and their location remains one of the most debated issues in the cultural heritage debate.
- The Egyptian mummies and coffins, in the upstairs rooms, among the richest Egyptian collections outside Cairo.
- The Assyrian reliefs from Nineveh and Nimrud, with scenes of King Ashurbanipal's lion hunt.
- The Sutton Hoo treasure, the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon ship burial with the warrior's helmet.
- The Lewis Chessmen, medieval walrus-ivory pieces found on a Scottish island.
- The moai Hoa Hakananai'a from Easter Island and the Cyrus Cylinder, sometimes described as the first charter of rights.
The debate over the collections
Like many museums born in the imperial age, the British Museum is at the centre of discussions about the provenance of some objects: as well as the Parthenon sculptures, the Benin Bronzes and other items acquired in colonial contexts. In 2023 the museum also faced the scandal of the discovery that some two thousand objects had been stolen from its stores over the years, most of which have since been recovered. A major project to renew the buildings and galleries is also under way.
Practical information
- Opening hours: generally daily from 10am to 5pm, with late opening on Fridays.
- Entry: free for the permanent collection; booking an entry slot online is recommended. Temporary exhibitions are paid.
- Getting there: Tottenham Court Road, Holborn or Russell Square stations.
- Time: two or three hours are enough for the main masterpieces; a week would not be enough to see everything. Choose a few rooms and come back.
See also London's museums, Bloomsbury and other neighbourhoods and the London guide.