British Museum building in London. british museum, london, uk

This is one of the largest museums in the world, which stores works of art, Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, amazing products of European and Asian masters of the Middle Ages, collections of medals and coins, engravings, drawings, ethnographic collections. All museum collections are located in 94 galleries with a total length of more than four kilometers.

Brief historical information about the British Museum

Hans Sloan (1660-1753), the famous physician and naturalist, president of the Royal Society, is considered to be the founder of the museum's collections.
The museum building was erected over 24 years (1823-1847) according to the project of Robert Smerk in the style of English neoclassicism located on a plot of 6 hectares.
During the 2nd World War, museum exhibits were taken out, as the building was partially destroyed by air raids. Museum halls and expositions have been restored over the years.

Unique collections of the museum

Collection of Ancient Egypt. It consists of more than 66 thousand exhibits from the period of 3 thousand years BC to the 11th century BC. The richest section is devoted to the monumental sculpture of the New Kingdom. But what you should pay attention to in the museum is the granite head of Thutmes III and the sculpture of Pharaoh II.

At the very entrance in one of the halls, the Rosetta Stone (196 BC) is on public display. The text of a decree in the name of King Ptolemy V is carved on it.
The Egyptian collection also consists of papyri (about 800 documents), which introduce us to the world of literary works, theological works, religious myths and hymns, scientific treatises, historical events, personal and business correspondence and other documents. The museum also contains a set of magic spells, the so-called Book of the Dead, consisting of 180 chapters.

There are also exhibits of wooden sarcophagi (more than 100) with well-preserved mummies of sacred animals in them.

The department dedicated to the antiquities of Asia Minor consists of collections of works of the ancient peoples of the Near East (Sumer, Babylonia, Akkad, Urartu, Palestine, Ancient Iran, etc.). This department contains magnificent monumental reliefs of Assyrian art. For example, monuments depicting scenes of hunting, battles, campaigns, ritual scenes depicting a winged deity with an eagle's head, a wounded lioness, hunting for wild donkeys, a dead lion, and 250 different reliefs.

The Department of Antiquities also contains the world's largest collection of clay tablets with hieroglyphs (more than 150,000). But the pride of the whole museum is the world-famous library of King Ashurbanipal from Nineveh, with its 20 thousand tablets of various contents.

The Ancient Roman and Ancient Greek Art Collection consists of magnificent works created at the end of the Roman Empire. There are also monumental sculptures from the sanctuary of Apollo, reliefs from the tomb of Xanthus.

The collection of ancient Greek ceramics is very widely represented: the red-figure dish of Epictetus, the black-figure amphora of Exekias, the Athenian red-figure crater, the Panathenaic amphora.

Ancient Roman works of art provide all museum visitors with a unique chance to see the sculptural portraits of Emperor Augustus, the bust of Emperor Hadrian. As well as wall paintings from the Villa Boscoreale, the mosaic floor of a Roman house from Herculaneum or Pompeii.

Looking into the prehistoric antiquities department of Roman Britain, you will be surprised by the primitive tools on display, bronze vessels, a bronze mirror from Desborough, a two-horned helmet, a unique hoard of silver from Mildenhall, which consists of 34 objects, as well as formidable military armor.
The department of numismatics will acquaint everyone with the first coins up to the present day. There are also Greek electrum coins, and a series of medals dedicated to the events of historical England, and other famous personalities.

The department of drawings and engravings, in its size and value, occupies a place next to the collections of the Louvre. All artistic splendor is collected here: the Holy Family (Michelangelo), the Arc de Triomphe (Dürer), Abundance (Sandro Botticelli); drawings and sketches by artists of the 15th-20th centuries. - Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael Santi, Peter Paul Robens, John Constable, Antoine Watteau, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Vincent Van Gogh and many other famous European artists.

The museum always has guides who speak Russian.
The museum is open daily from 10.00 to 17.00. Entrance is absolutely free!

You can get to the museum using the metro: Tottenham Court Road (500m); Russell Square (800m); Holborn (500m); Goodge Street (800m).
By Bus: Stop at New Oxford Street, route no. 1,7,8,19,25,38,55,98,242;
Stop at Southampton Row, route number 59,68,91,168,188.

British Museum in London (the British Museum) was founded by order of the Parliament of the Kingdom at the end of the 18th century. Today it is one of the largest museums in the world. For many hundreds of years, British Museum are works of art of Ancient Greece, Rome, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, medieval Asia and Europe, here are unique collections of coins and orders, drawings, frescoes, engravings. In addition to the ancient exhibits of the gallery of the British Museum, visitors are also presented with works of modern painting, graphics and sculpture. The British Museum contains over 90 rooms, the length of which exceeds 4 kilometers.

History of the British Museum.

The history of the British Museum begins in the winter of 1753 with the adoption of an Act of Parliament establishing the National Museum of Britain. It began with a collection that the British naturalist Sir Hans Sloane presented to King George II. This gift included more than 70 thousand antique exhibits, among which there were about 250 monuments, which later served as a pretext for the foundation of the Egyptian department. A few years later, the museum fund was supplemented by a collection of books donated to the country by collector and librarian James Cotton (Robert Bruce Cotton).

Secrets of the British Museum in London.

The secrets of the British Museum are connected with the history of the replenishment of the collection in the late 18th - early 19th century. Most of the exhibits ended up in the museum under very strange circumstances, they were illegally exported and taken to London. During the existence of the British colonial empire, exhibits from all territories subject to it came here, and they remain here to this day. One such item is, for example, the Rosetta Stone.

Egypt and Greece are still demanding that the UK return the exported cultural property to their homeland.

The museum collections have expanded so much that the managers had to divide them into thematic departments, among which Egyptian and numismatic stand out. It was also decided to exhibit literary values ​​separately, in connection with this, the British Museum Library was formed. Although the Egyptian section of this museum belongs to the UK, it is one of the largest in the world in terms of the number of exhibits and contains unique items from Ancient Egypt, such as several pages of the legendary Book of the Dead.

Where is the British Museum located?

The building that houses the British Museum was built by Robert Smurk in the neoclassical style. This giant mansion is located on one of the central streets of London - Great Russell Street and covers an area of ​​more than 6 hectares.

Back in 1759 British museum received the first visitors, who were high-ranking persons and friends of the royal family. Only in 1847 the doors of the museum were opened for the first time to ordinary people. Modern tourists and residents of London have the opportunity to visit the halls of the museum for free, to observe the unique exhibits of each of the hundreds of halls. The collection of the British National Museum contains several departments: the department of prehistoric objects, the department of monuments of Roman Britain, the Ancient Egyptian department, the department of Roman and Greek art, the department of Asian antiquities.

Since the opening of the British Museum in London, the number of exhibits presented in the museum has grown many times over. To this day, the British government is buying up unique objects of not only ancient, but also modern art, daily supplementing the collection of the British Museum. Among the many museums in England British National Museum (the british museum) occupies a place of honor and for many years remains the pride of London.

Address: UK, London, Bloomsbury area, Great Russell street
Museum foundation date: 1753
Museum opening: August 10, 1759
Second most visited art museum in the world
Coordinates: 51°31"10.0"N 0°07"36.8"W

London, the capital of Great Britain, is rich in attractions located in it. And one of them is the British Museum.

The museum was founded at the end of the 18th century, or rather, in 1753, by the parliament of the empire. It is the central historical and archaeological museum of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The exposition of the museum includes 94 galleries, stretching for 4 km.

British Museum from a bird's eye view

As for the sources of museum exhibits, they were the collections of three prominent and famous Britons: Dr. Hans Sloan, aristocrat Robert Harley, who at that time had the status of an earl, and Robert Cotton, who is a well-known antiquary. A considerable number of books of the latter served as a springboard for the creation of the famous British Library.

Initially, the museum was located in the aristocratic mansion of Montague House near the capital of the British Empire and was closed to the public. The doors of the museum were opened to the general public only 6 years after its creation, in 1759.. Since then, it has become more and more rich in a variety of exhibits collected around the world.

Main entrance to the museum

Antique vases, marbles, rare and valuable minerals, priceless works of art of ancient Greece were brought. The most striking exhibits are the works of the Parthenon and other historical values ​​from the collections of Greville, Townley, Elgin, Hamilton, etc.

However, not all museum exhibits were obtained peacefully and legally in the modern sense of these words. Britain, as a colonial empire, exported valuable artifacts from its dominions. States such as Egypt and Greece are asking for the return of exhibits that were taken out during the days of colonialism, until now.

Great Court of Queen Elizabeth II

The 19th century was the peak of the development of the British Museum. It was at this time, due to the diversity and large number of exhibits, that the museum had to be divided into departments. The entire collection of the museum no longer fit in the building, so many departments were transported to another location, and in 1847 the Montagu House building was demolished. Instead, a new building was built using the classicist style. The construction was led by Robert Smork, which is the repository of museum artifacts to this day. Due to effective excavations in Mesopotamia in the 20th century, the collection of the British Museum was replenished with a host of new exhibits from the Middle East.

Reading Room of the British Museum Library

The museum now hosts frequent guided tours that originate in the Paul Hemlin Library. She is popular with children. On Sundays there is a club meeting called "Young Friends of the British Museum". Also, the museum building often hosts events called "Nights at the Museum", in which visitors stay overnight and participate in a thematic performance aimed at immersion in a particular culture (for example, "Japanese Night").

Moai from Easter Island

Despite the fact that the museum is owned by the British, it contains exhibits from all over the world that were once subject to the British colonial empire. So, for example, the collection of Egyptian valuables occupies the most museum space (92 meters long and several large halls). It is considered one of the largest collections in the world and includes such rarities as the granite head of the ruler of Egypt, Thutmes III, a priceless sculpture of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, as well as stone sarcophagi and several copies of the famous Book of the Dead.

Expositions of the British Museum:

Facade of the Nereid Temple

Greco-Roman exposition

It occupies 12 rooms in the British Museum and consists of numerous monuments to the existence of the Roman Empire and Greek democracy. The most prominent representatives: Lycian sculptures, remains from the ruins of the famous temple of Diana from Ephesus, works of art such as Phigalion Marbles, examples of luxury goods of the Roman Empire, in particular the values ​​​​of its rulers. In 1872, the museum received a priceless collection of stones from the era of antiquity called the Castellani Collection, thanks to which this department has become one of the largest museum departments in the world.

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Department of Art of Ancient Greece and Rome

Egyptian exposition

As mentioned above, this is one of the largest collections of artifacts from the country of the pharaohs. Most of the exhibits in this collection date back to 3000 BC. until the 7th century AD An important part of the Egyptian exposition is occupied by priceless ancient writings on papyrus. Among them are chronicles, works of literature, various pagan myths and other valuable historical documents that have survived to this day.

Bas-reliefs of the Ancient East

Department of Antiquities of the Near East Region

This section contains very interesting and rare exhibits. There are a number of such invaluable things as the cylinder seals of C. Townley and W. Hamilton, collections of historical monuments collected by researchers R. Kerr Porter and C. J. Rich. These scholars specialized precisely in the ancient history of Persia and Mesopotamia. The sources of many exhibits in this department are the excavations of Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian capital, the exploration of the Eastern Mediterranean and the famous Hittite culture.

Department of the East

This section of the British Museum is rich in sculptures, ceramics, various engravings and unique examples of painting from the Far East. Here you can find bronze Buddha statues, ritual vessels of ancient China, bronze products, hieroglyphic writings 4000 years old and other values ​​of the ancient East.

Not deprived of the attention of the creators of the museum and Britain under the rule of the Romans. Many monuments of the Celtic culture and all subsequent peoples that inhabited the British Isles, examples of medieval temple building and jewelry widely cover these periods of history that Great Britain once went through.

The museum also has less voluminous, but also significant and valuable departments.

Hall of Ancient Egypt

The British Museum has a huge collection of coins and valuable medals, which are a godsend for any numismatist. It consists of 200 thousand copies, some of which date back to the 7th century BC. e. There are also modern coins in the museum.

The Department of Ethnography has collected household items of peoples discovered for Europeans by navigators James Cook and Christopher Columbus. These are African, American and Australian populations.

The collection of the most valuable engravings and drawings can be compared with the wealth of the Louvre. Here are the works of such creators as Verrocchio, Dürer, Raphael, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Gainsborough and other creators.

Which is located on Great Russell Street, in the heart of London. Still would! In one of the largest museums in the world stored exhibits, from the mere mention of which is breathtaking. The Rosetta Stone, a fragment of the legendary ancient Greek Parthenon, moai - an idol from Easter Island, the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci - all this is just a small fraction of the historical treasures that are on display. at the British Museum.

To see everything exhibits, presented in the British Museum, it will take at least a week. The collection, consisting of more than seven million exhibits, covers a gigantic stretch of world history of two million years. The oldest object on display british museum- Olduvai stone, one of the first tools invented by man. The unique ax was found in 1931 by the British archaeologist Louis Leakey during his first research expedition to Tanzania.

Of course, if you are going to London for the first time, it is not possible to devote at least one day to the British Museum (unless this is the main purpose of the trip to the British capital). However, it is better to look at british museum two hours than just walking by. Even such a short time can be used rationally - you just need to prioritize in advance.

Express route. You can quickly zip through everything halls of the British Museum, stopping only near the most interesting exhibits for you. Quite a tedious scenario - after all, millions of copies are located in halls, the total length of which is approximately 4 kilometers.

Audio guide. An audio guide service in Russian is available in the main hall of the British Museum for a nominal fee of £5. The electronic guide will not only take you along the most convenient route, but will also tell you the most interesting exhibits in a fascinating way.

The most interesting exhibits of the British Museum

rosetta stone

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous British Museum exhibits in London. The artifact, found at the end of the 18th century, allowed Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, and now welcomes visitors to the British Museum in the first room of the Egyptian exhibition.

Mummy Katabet

The mummies of the high priestess of Amun-Ra named Katabet are about three and a half thousand years old. The body of Katabet is wrapped in cloth. On the gilded mask covering the face of the mummy, a portrait of a priestess is depicted - the artist depicted Katabet in a wig and with large round earrings. It is interesting that initially the priestess's sarcophagus was clearly intended for the burial of a man. Another amazing feature of the Katabet mummy is that the woman's brain, unlike other organs, was not taken out.

Sculptures of the Parthenon

Ancient sculptures, which the English collector Lord Thomas Elgin dug out of the legendary temple in the 19th century, from time to time become a stumbling block in relations between Greece and Great Britain. No matter how Greece asks for the return of what belongs to it by right, beautiful sculptures remain in the collection to this day. London Museum.

Hoa Hakananaiya

The pearl of the British Museum collection is a Polynesian sculpture from Easter Island called Hoa-Hakananaya, which means “kidnapped friend” or “hidden friend” in Russian. Initially, the moai idol was painted white and red, but over time, the paint peeled off, revealing basalt tuff - a natural material of volcanic origin, from which the monolithic sculpture was made.

Beard of the Great Sphinx

Through the efforts of the Italian Giovanni Battista Cavigli, a fragment of the beard of the Great Sphinx is kept in the British Museum. Caviglia was the first adventurer to unearth the main attraction

Museums in the UK. The most famous and famous museums of cities in Great Britain - photo and video, addresses, location, sites, schedules, opening hours.

Start your acquaintance with the world culture and history of Great Britain from London, the cradle of royal dynasties. The pearl of the country's museum heritage can be considered the British Museum, the pride of the British. This is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world: its expositions tell not only about the history of Great Britain - entire galleries are devoted to Ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, Mesopotamia, medieval Europe and contain interesting artifacts related to different eras of these ancient states.

Art

Fine art connoisseurs will enjoy visiting the many galleries in the UK. Of great interest is the London National Gallery, which contains more than two thousand paintings by the great artists of Western Europe, including Rembrandt and Rubens.

Other remarkable art galleries are located in many cities of the kingdom, the most interesting of them are in Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester. Thus, the Leeds City Art Gallery has the status of one of the best museums in the UK. Its exhibition includes paintings by famous English artists, as well as sculptures by the famous modern master Henry Moore.

Don't miss the Beatles Museum in Liverpool.

The science

The scientific view of the world is widely covered in British museums. One of the largest museums in the capital is the Natural History Museum of London, with stuffed animals and skeletons of animals, modern and prehistoric. There is a stunning exhibit on the flora of Britain, as well as an impressive collection of rocks, minerals and meteorites.

The Science Museum in London is part of the National Museum of Science and Technology complex. The “Night of Science” is held here: several hundred children aged 8-11, accompanied by their parents, spend the whole night in the museum - they immerse themselves in science in a playful way, sleep in the galleries in the galleries, and in the morning have breakfast, conduct experiments and watch movies in the format IMAX.

Literature

One of the most popular literary heroes has his own museum in London. Each guest of the Sherlock Holmes Museum can sit at the table of the great detective, take a photo with a pipe and for a moment feel like a character in your favorite books, films and TV series.

And the Shakespeare House Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was born and lived part of his life, is a real treasure for his fans and one of the most beloved tourist attractions in the UK. Here you can trace how William Shakespeare developed as a playwright and actor, see the conditions in which he lived, the objects that surrounded him, and thus for a few moments feel the closeness and immortality of this talented person. Here the Royal Shakespeare Theater appears to the attention of travelers.

Amazing Collections

Great Britain is truly a storehouse of the most incredible and unusual museums. For example, the Teddy Bear Museum in London, which has a fantastic collection of teddy bears, or the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, which contains items related to the art of magic.

Images of famous people from different eras can be found at Madame Tussauds, where millions of tourists come to take pictures with the figures of their favorite actors, singers, or even scandalous political figures.

A tidbit for all the curious is the Dog Collar Museum, located in Leeds Castle. The intricate accessories here are presented in the form of real pieces of art, and there are truly masterpieces.

local museums

Glasgow is home to one of the best art galleries in Britain, as well as the Hunterian Museum. It was founded by anatomist William Hunter and initially consisted of a collection of scientific instruments and instruments of famous doctors and scientists. The indefatigable Hunter expanded his collection to include a wide variety of objects: paintings by local artists, artifacts from ancient Egypt, traces of Roman rule in Scotland, one of the largest collections of coins in the world.

The pride of Belfast is the Ulster Museum, which contains exhibits related to natural history, zoology, ethnography and archeology. In Cardiff, there is the National Museum of Wales, consisting of exhibits of various subjects: archeology, geology, fine arts, botany and zoology.

And in the town of Keswick, where graphite was mined several centuries ago, the Pencil Museum is now open. Here you can not only view the exhibition, but also take drawing lessons and purchase elite stationery in a huge store.

Extreme lovers have a direct road to the city of Inverness, where the famous Loch Ness is located - you may be able to see the famous monster Nessie with your own eyes.