Description of the attraction
The British Museum is one of the largest in the world. Founded in 1753, it reflects the history of mankind from its very beginnings.
People's Museum
The museum began with the collection of the British physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloan, who collected plants, books, manuscripts, and medals all his life. Sloane bequeathed them to the nation, Parliament passed a special act by which the assembly, along with the royal library, was opened to the public. The British Museum became the world's first museum of a new kind - not owned by the monarch or the church, but by the people.
At first, the museum was housed in a specially purchased Montague House. But the collection quickly expanded due to private collections (for example, the publisher George Thomason, who donated more than 22 thousand documents from the Civil War in England) and museum acquisitions (the results of the expedition of James Cook, Egyptian and Greek treasures). In the first half of the 19th century, the dilapidated Montague House was demolished, in its place Sir Robert Smike built one of the largest buildings in Europe, performing it in a neoclassical spirit.
British Museum collection
The collection was intensively replenished with treasures that Britain, the superpower of the 19th century, brought from all over the world. After Napoleon's defeat in Egypt in 1801, the British got the famous Rosetta Stone, thanks to which Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone was brought to London aboard a captured French frigate, and since 1802 it has been on display in the British Museum. At the beginning of the 19th century, the museum received such unique exhibits as a colossal bust of Ramses II of ancient Thebes, priceless marble friezes of the Athenian Parthenon, Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the collection of the British diplomat Claudius Rich.
In 1840, the museum began its own archaeological excavations in Asia Minor. This is how the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was discovered - its statues became one of the pearls of the collection. A library of cuneiform tablets of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC) was opened.
There are now nearly eight million exhibits in the British Museum. Many of them are unique. This is a Minoan gold treasure from the island of Aegina, the legacy of one and a half thousand years BC. NS. highly developed civilization. Amazing "treasures of the Oxus", gold and silver items of the Achaemenid era (V century BC) - until Benvenuto Cellini jewelry did not reach such perfection. A perfectly preserved gilded mummy from the 18th Dynasty (circa 1250 BC) was removed from Egypt. Chess pieces from the Isle of Lewis, finely carved from walrus bone and whalebone, represent the upper classes of Norwegian society at the end of the 12th century.
At the end of the last century, the museum complex was reconstructed according to the project of Norman Foster, and the Great Courtyard with a mosaic glass roof appeared - the largest covered space in Europe. The museum is huge, its departments freely accommodate both dimensional Egyptian antiquities and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt.
On a note
- Location: Great Russell Street, London.
- Nearest tube stations: "Holborn", "Tottenham Court Road", "Russell Square"
- Official website:
- Opening hours: daily from 10:00 to 17:30, except January 1, December 24-26. On Thursdays and Fridays, some departments are open until 20:30.
- Tickets: admission is free.
