British Museum

About British Museum

National museum in London, United Kingdom

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture in the Bloomsbury area of London, whose permanent collection of some eight million artefacts is the largest in the world, documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Established in 1753, it was the world's first public national museum; it was largely based at first on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane and opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House, on the site of the present Greek Revival building. In 2025 it received more than 6.4 million visitors, making it the second most visited attraction in the United Kingdom. Its expansion over 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation, and some of its best-known acquisitions, such as the Greek Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, remain subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims; it also spun off branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881, and hosted the British Library in its Reading Room until 1997. It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and, like all UK national museums, charges no admission except for loan exhibitions. For Arab and Muslim visitors some sections are not to be missed: the ancient Egyptian galleries with the largest collection of mummies outside Egypt, the ancient Middle East galleries of Assyria and Babylon, the Albukhary Gallery of the Islamic World with its manuscripts, ceramics and astronomical instruments, as well as the Greek, Chinese and African galleries including the Benin bronzes and the Roman Hoxne hoard, all beneath the famous glass roof of the Great Court.

Where:

London, United Kingdom