Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The origins of the BM (as it's known) lie in the seventy thousand curios - from fossils
and flamingo tongues to “maggots taken from a man's ear” - collected by
Hans Sloane
,
a Chelsea physician who bequeathed them to George II in 1753 for £20,000. The
king couldn't (or wouldn't) pay, so the collection was purchased by an unenthusiastic
government to form the world's first public secular museum, housed in a mansion
bought with the proceeds of a dubiously conducted public lottery. Soon afterwards,
the BM began to acquire the antiquities that have made it, in many ways, the world's
largest museum of plundered goods. The “robberies” of Lord Elgin are only the best
known; countless others engaged in sporadic looting throughout the Empire and
the BM itself sent out archeologists to strip classical sites bare. Despite calls from
countries around the world for the return of their national treasures, the BM looks
unlikely to shift its stance.
The BM can get very crowded, particularly at weekends, so get here as early as
possible. It's all a far cry from the museum's beginnings in 1759, when it was open for
just three hours a day, entry was by written application and tickets for “any person of
decent appearance” were limited to ten per hour. Nowadays, the BM can tire even the
most ardent museum lover. J.B. Priestley, for one, wished “there was a little room
somewhere in the British Museum that contained only about twenty exhibits and good
lighting, easy chairs and a notice imploring you to smoke”. Short of such a place, the
best advice is to visit the Enlightenment gallery and the adjacent room 2, tick off one
or two of the
highlights
(see box, p.109), or concentrate on one or two sections.
6
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Opening hours
Daily 10am-5.30pm, Fri until 8.30pm.
Admission
Free except for large special exhibitions - for
these, tickets cost £12-15 and are best bought in advance
as they often sell out.
Contact details
T
020 7323 8000,
W
britishmuseum.org.
Tube
Tottenham Court Road, Russell Square or Holborn.
Orientation
There are two entrances: the main one on
Great Russell St and a back entrance on Montague Place.
You can pick up a museum plan from the main information
desk in the Great Court, but even equipped with a plan, it's
easy to get confused - don't hesitate to ask the helpful and
knowledgeable museum staff.
Tours
Regular daily guided tours, known as eyeopener
tours (30-40min; free), concentrate on just one room, as do
Friday evening Spotlight tours (20min; free). A Highlights
tour costs £12 (daily 11.30am & 2pm; 1hr 30min). Look out,
too, for the Hands on desks in some galleries, where you can
handle some artefacts. Another option is to pick up a
multimedia guide (available daily 10am-4.30pm; £5).
Eating
The museum's best café and restaurant is the
Gallery Café
beyond room 12; the
Court Café
in the Great
Court itself is more snacky, though it has a spectacular
setting; the
Court Restaurant
on the upper floor is pricier,
and best booked in advance (
T
020 7323 8990).
Ancient Greece and Rome
he BM's
Ancient Greece and Rome galleries
make up the largest section in the
museum. The ground floor (rooms 11-23) is laid out along broadly chronological
lines, from the Bronze Age to Hellenistic times; the upper floor (rooms 69-73)
concentrates on the Roman Empire.
THE GREAT COURT
At the centre of the British Museum is the spectacular
Great Court
- the largest covered
square in Europe - with its startling glass-and-steel curved roof, designed in 2000 by Norman
Foster. At the centre of the Great Court, newly encased in stone, is the domed, Round
Reading
Room
, designed by Sydney Smirke, Robert's younger brother, in 1857 to house the British
Library. Numerous writers from Oscar Wilde to Virginia Woolf, have frequented the library, and it
was here at padded leather desk O7 that Karl Marx wrote
Das Kapital
. Since the British Library
moved out (see p.127), the BM have been using the place to stage temporary exhibitions, but
when the new Conservations and Exhibitions Centre, on the north side of the museum, opens
in 2014, the Reading Room should once again be open to the public - and spectacular it is, too.
