British Museum

The British Museum in London is the United Kingdom's – and one of the world's – largest and most important museums of human history and culture. The oldest museum in the world, The British Museum was established in 1753 and was based largely on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane.

The British Museum first opened to the public on January 15, 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building.

The Britsh Museum is home to over seven million objects from all continents illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. Many of the artifacts are stored underneath the museum due to lack of space.

The British Museum, like the other main museums and art galleries in London, charges no admission fee. Admission charges, however, are levied for some temporary special exhibitions.

The Museum offers a range of learning experiences for everyone including schools, families and adults, one of which is a Postgraduate Diploma that focuses on the classical and decorative arts of Asia.

Though principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, today. the British Museum was founded as an 'universal museum'.This is reflected in the first bequest by Sir Hans Sloane, comprising some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens, prints by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle and Far East and the Americas.

The Foundation Act, passed on June 7, 1753, added two other libraries to the Sloane collection. The Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dated back to Elizabethan times and the Harleian library was the collection of the first and second Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library assembled by various British monarchs.

Together these four 'Foundation collections' included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf."

The temporary exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun, held by the British Museum in 1972, was the most successful in British history, attracting 1,694,117 visitors.

In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing The British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from the British Museum. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997.

The British Museum of today is primarily a museum of antiquities and ethnography. Lack of space has meant that it has had to shed its collections of natural history and books, but the British Museum still claims the mantle of 'universal museum'.

Further information can be found on the British Museum Official Website.

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