British Museum

The British Museum stands in Bloomsbury, a quiet corner of London’s Camden borough. Its grand neoclassical building houses the world’s largest collection of human history, art and culture. Eight million artefacts trace civilisation from its earliest days to the present. Founded in 1753, it was the first public national museum anywhere. In 2025 it welcomed more than six million visitors, making it Britain’s second most popular attraction. The museum began with the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, an Anglo-Irish physician and scientist. His bequest of 71,000 objects included books, manuscripts, dried plants and antiquities from across the globe. The Cottonian and Harleian libraries soon joined, bringing treasures such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and Beowulf. Captain Cook’s South Seas voyages added objects from distant lands. Later, the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles entered the collection. Inside, galleries lead past Egyptian mummies and Assyrian reliefs to the Parthenon sculptures. The King’s Library fills a towering bookcase in the Reading Room. Natural history specimens once crowded the first floor, now partly moved to South Kensington. Montagu House, the original home, still forms the museum’s heart. Visitors walk beneath high ceilings past cases of coins, prints and Greek vases.