The British Museum - London Museums - London

The British Museum is one of the top visitor sites in London and it’s the oldest public museum in the world, first opening in 1753. Its located in the Bloomsbury area and is about a ten minute walk from Tottenham Court Road, Holborn or Russell Square tubes, the main entrance is on Great Russell Street, if you’re there in summer just follow the crowds.

It was originally opened to house the collections left by Hans Sloane and grew into Britain’s national museum of antiquities and also housed the national library until 1997. The current building with the Greek style facade and 44 tall columns around the outside was built in the early/mid 19th century when the collection grew to big for the previous building. The British Museum now has over 7million items from all over the world.


When you enter through the main entrance they’ll be corridors to galleries on the right and left and a large open staircase going up to the second floor but the first thing you should do is carry on walking straight to the Great Court. This is the centre piece of a £100million redevelopment at the British Museum and opened in 2000.

It does look spectacular, the famous huge circular Reading Room of the British Library has been restored, although the British Library’s national collection of books and manuscripts has been moved to the new building at Euston Road. The Reading Room is open to members of the public to use and its worth going inside just to see where Karl Marx spent years researching and writing his revolutionary ideas, where the likes of Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw also spent time and to see the amazing domed library.

A big part of the Great Court project was putting on the glass roof to make the largest covered square in Europe using over 1600 panes of shaped glass. Because the joins in the panes with a spiders web kind of pattern the first thing you want to do is stop and take a photo, the design of this court really blends different old and new styles well, at least I think so.

At ground level in the Great Court you’ll find cafeterias, shops and toilets and if you go up the steps around the Reading Room you’ll find a restaurant at the top.

The British Museum is huge, almost to big and its one of those museums you can get lost in or at least lose track of where the hell you are. Its galleries are on three levels and there are endless rooms top wander in and out of, you definitely need some kind of map or floor plan to figure out where you are and where you need to get to. They do have plenty of staff around if you do want some help though.
Its displays cover human culture through the last few thousand years and are split into regions of the world including Britain, Europe, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Africa, Americas, Japan, Asia, Islamic and others. If you were to go there I’d recommend picking out a few regions and sticking to them, because if you try to go through them all it just becomes a blur of artifacts, pottery and sculpture and you’ll barely have time to realise what you’re looking at.

The British Museum is free to enter but they do have special exhibitions that require you to buy tickets. Currently they have The Past From Above looking at the world’s greatest archaeological sites, running until 11 February 2007 and costing £5 and Power and Taboo which explores the Gods of Polynesia, running until 7 January and which is free to view. Different parts of the museum are open at various times, the Great Court is open Sun-Wed 9am-6pm, Thurs-Sat 9am-11pm. The Galleries are open Sat-Wed 10am-5.30pm, Thurs-Fri 10am-8.30pm. The museum is closed 24-26 December, 1 January and Good Friday.