The British Museum is one of the largest museums in the world. Founded in 1753, it reflects human history from its origins.
The People's Museum
The museum began with the collection of British physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane, who spent his life collecting plants, books, manuscripts and medals. Sloane bequeathed them to the nation and Parliament passed a special act to open the collection, along with the royal library, to the public. The British Museum became the first museum of a new kind in the world - belonging not to the monarch or the church, but to the people.
At first, the museum was housed in a specially purchased Montague House. But the collection was rapidly expanded through private collections (for example, the publisher George Thomason, who donated more than 22,000 documents from the English Civil War) and museum acquisitions (the results of the James Cook expedition, Egyptian and Greek treasures). In the first half of the 19th century, the dilapidated Montague House was demolished, and in its place Sir Robert Smike built one of the largest buildings in Europe in a neoclassical style.
The collection of the British Museum
The collection was intensively enriched by the 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 Egyptian hieroglyphics. The stone was brought to London on board a captured French frigate, and since 1802 it has been exhibited in the British Museum. In the early 19th century, the museum received such unique exhibits as a colossal bust of Ramses II from ancient Thebes, priceless marble friezes of the Athenian Parthenon, Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the collection of 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 jewels of the collection. The library of cuneiform tablets of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC) was discovered.
Now the British Museum has almost eight million artefacts. Many of them are unique. This Minoan gold treasure from the island of Aegina, the legacy of a highly developed civilisation that perished over 1500 BC. Marvellous are the "treasures of Oksa", gold and silver pieces from the Achaemenid era (the 5th century BC) - until Benvenuto Cellini, jewellery had not reached such perfection. A well-preserved gilded mummy of Katebet of the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1250 BC) was brought from Egypt. Chess pieces from the Isle of Lewis, finely carved from walrus bone and whalebone, depict 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 Norman Foster's design, creating the Great Court with a mosaic glass roof - the largest covered space in Europe. The museum is huge, its departments freely accommodate both oversized Egyptian antiquities and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt.
On a side note
- Location: Great Russell Street, London.
- The nearest underground stations are Holborn, Tottenham Court Road, Russell Square
- Official website: http://www.britishmuseum.org
- Opening hours: daily from 10:00 to 17:30, except 1 January, 24-26 December. On Thursdays and Fridays some departments are open until 20:30.
- Tickets: admission is free.
