Museums & Galleries

British Museum

London, United Kingdom
British Museum

Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG

London, United Kingdom

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A museum that feels like the world gathered under one roof — brilliant, overwhelming, complicated, and impossible to ignore. The British Museum is one of London’s essential cultural stops, but also a place that asks difficult questions about history, power, collecting and ownership.

Located on Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, The British Museum is one of the world’s most important museums of human history, art and culture. Its collection spans two million years of history across six continents, from ancient objects to global cultural treasures.

The museum was founded in the 18th century and opened to the public in 1759, originally housed in Montagu House. Its collection began with Sir Hans Sloane’s holdings and grew over centuries through donations, excavations, purchases, colonial networks, conflict, and collecting practices that the museum itself now frames as part of its complex collecting history.

Image credit

3BRBS / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What you’ll see here

At The British Museum, the experience can be extraordinary — but also overwhelming. Don’t try to see everything. Choose a route: ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Assyria, Islamic art, Africa, Asia, Enlightenment collecting, or the museum’s most famous highlights.

You may experience:

  • The Rosetta Stone
  • Ancient Egyptian sculpture and mummies
  • Assyrian reliefs
  • Greek and Roman sculpture
  • The Parthenon Sculptures
  • African, Asian, Islamic and Oceanic collections
  • The Great Court and Reading Room
  • Temporary exhibitions, talks and guided tours

Worth the trip

What makes The British Museum special is its scale and depth: few places let you move from ancient writing to imperial power, ritual objects, sculpture, trade, death, beauty and belief in one visit. It is one of the great museums for understanding how human cultures have made meaning through objects.

ArtLovers Tip

Don’t visit the British Museum as a trophy hunt. Choose five objects and give them time. Then ask the second question: not only “what am I seeing?”, but “how did this object get here?

The museum is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00, with Friday late opening until 20:30; last entry is shortly before closing. General entry is free, though special exhibitions may require tickets.

From the collection

Collection at British Museum (1)

London, United Kingdom

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