The British Museum
The world's first national public museum began with a doctor's cupboards of curiosities, a lottery and a pickled collection that included 71,000 objects.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Bloomsbury, London
- Founded
- 1753 by Act of Parliament; opened to the public on 15 January 1759
- Present building
- Greek Revival design by Sir Robert Smirke, built 1823 to 1852
- Founding collection
- About 71,000 objects from Sir Hans Sloane, bought for £20,000
- Great Court
- Foster + Partners glass-roofed court, opened 2000
- Collection size
- Around 8 million objects, only a small fraction on display
- Visitor numbers
- About 6.2 million in 2019; its busiest recent year was 2015, with about 6.8 million
- Famous residents
- Rosetta Stone, Parthenon sculptures, Lewis Chessmen, Sutton Hoo treasures
A doctor's cabinet of curiosities became a national treasure
The British Museum exists because one very rich physician couldn't bear the thought of his collection being broken up. Sir Hans Sloane, a society doctor and naturalist, spent a lifetime gathering books, plants, coins, antiquities and curiosities. By the time he died in 1753 he had around 71,000 objects. His will offered the lot to the nation for £20,000, far less than it was worth. Parliament accepted and passed the British Museum Act the same year, raising the money through a public lottery. The museum opened on 15 January 1759 in a converted mansion, Montagu House, on the site it still occupies. It was among the first museums anywhere that aimed to hold everything for everyone, rather than serve a royal court or a university.
The mansion that was knocked down for its own collection
Montagu House did not last. As gifts and purchases poured in, the old building became cramped and then shabby. In 1823 work began on a grand replacement designed by Sir Robert Smirke. His answer was a Greek Revival palace, with a colonnade of 44 Ionic columns across the front. In the pediment above sits a sculpture group by Richard Westmacott, finished in 1851, called The Progress of Civilisation. The quadrangle building was completed in 1852, nearly three decades after work started. The museum went up piece by piece around the old house, so visitors kept visiting while builders worked next door.
The Reading Room where Karl Marx kept a desk
In 1857 Sydney Smirke, Robert's brother, completed the domed Reading Room in the middle of the courtyard. Its readers included Karl Marx, who researched Das Kapital there while living in London. The library collections moved out to the new British Library at St Pancras in 1997, which left the courtyard empty and unused. The solution, opened in 2000, was the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, designed by Foster + Partners. A glass roof made of 3,312 uniquely shaped panes now covers the space, creating the largest covered public square in Europe. The old Reading Room still stands at the centre, with its blue and gold dome, and it reopened to general public visits in July 2024.
Headline acts, and the arguments that come with them
The Rosetta Stone arrived in 1802, after British forces defeated the French in Egypt. Its identical decree written in three scripts allowed Jean-François Champollion to crack Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1820s. It is the most-photographed object in the building. The Parthenon sculptures came in 1816, when Parliament bought them from Lord Elgin. Greece has long asked for their return, and the debate continues to this day. Smaller objects may be more memorable. The Lewis Chessmen, carved from walrus ivory and found on the Isle of Lewis in 1831, are among the most-loved items in the building. Hoa Hakananai'a, the basalt moai from Easter Island, arrived in 1869 aboard HMS Topaze. And Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon ship burial found in Suffolk, came to the museum after Edith Pretty donated the finds in 1939.
Myth versus reality: where is the rest of it?
People often assume the museum is a vast hall of everything it owns. In reality, with a collection of around 8 million objects, only a small fraction is ever on display. The rest sits in stores, study rooms and research collections. Another common idea is that the museum is all about Britain. It's the opposite: it's a museum of world cultures, with the Sutton Hoo helmet sharing a roof with Assyrian palace reliefs and Egyptian mummies. Before you go, pick a few rooms rather than trying to cover it all. Look up as you cross the Great Court, then head for the Egyptian sculpture galleries to find the Rosetta Stone. The Assyrian winged bulls are enormous, and a visitor can easily lose an hour in the Anglo-Saxon and Roman Britain rooms. The museum drew about 6.2 million visitors in 2019, making it one of the busiest attractions in Britain, so early in the day is best.
Notable people
- Sir Hans Sloane
- Sir Robert Smirke
- Sydney Smirke
- Lord Elgin
- Karl Marx
- Edith Pretty
- Jean-François Champollion
- Norman Foster
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
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