The British Museum and its great courtyard of light

The British Museum in London combines an eighteenth-century collection with a nineteenth-century monumental building and a vast covered courtyard that reshaped its heart in 2000. Its origins lie in a public bequest accepted by Parliament in 1753, and it opened to visitors in 1759 as a museum of books, artefacts and natural specimens on the same Bloomsbury site where it stands today.

A museum born from Enlightenment collecting

The British Museum was founded in 1753 after the British Parliament accepted the collections of the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane, together with major manuscript libraries such as the Cottonian and Harleian collections.founded in 1753 The museum opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House, a seventeenth-century mansion on Great Russell Street that was adapted to house shelves of books, cabinets of specimens and early displays of antiquities.opened its doors in 1759

Through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the collection expanded with royal libraries, archaeological finds and ethnographic material from many parts of the world. George II donated the “Old Royal Library” in 1757, while George IV later transferred King George III’s library, prompting a major rebuilding of the museum to house both scholarly readers and the growing public collection.George III’s library in 1823 The long Enlightenment Gallery, still aligned with the original neoclassical wing, preserves the feel of an eighteenth-century museum arranged around curiosity and classification.Enlightenment Gallery

Greek Revival architecture around a central reading room

The present main building of The British Museum dates from the period between 1823 and 1852 and was designed by the architect Sir Robert Smirke in a Greek Revival style.Greek Revival style building Smirke’s plan replaced Montagu House with a much larger stone structure organised around internal courtyards, with long wings and a grand south entrance that faces Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury.Sir Robert Smirke’s building

Inside, Sydney Smirke’s Round Reading Room, opened in 1857, rises at the centre of the museum above a circular space once lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves.Round Reading Room opened in 1857 The reading room sits within an internal courtyard that for most of its history remained open to the sky and flanked by ranges of library and museum rooms. Its proportions, with a tall drum and a dome over the readers’ desks, still anchor the layout of the museum even after large parts of the surrounding library collection moved elsewhere during the twentieth century.

The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court and the glass roof

In 2000 the internal courtyard around the Round Reading Room was transformed into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, designed by Foster and Partners as a covered public square for The British Museum.Queen Elizabeth II Great Court A large glass roof spans the space between the historic wings, enclosing two acres of former open yard beneath a grid of steel and glass while leaving the reading room itself free-standing at the centre.glass-roofed courtyard

The Great Court reorients the experience of The British Museum around this interior square. Visitors enter through the colonnaded portico on Great Russell Street and pass into a light-filled court where staircases, bridges and openings connect the lower level with the surrounding upper galleries. From the Great Court there are views of the Greek Revival façades that form the internal walls, the drum of the Round Reading Room and the pattern of the roof overhead, making the architecture itself as much a subject of interest as the artefacts displayed in the galleries.

Visiting The British Museum: what travellers from Western Europe should know

• The British Museum stands on Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district of central London, within the borough of Camden and close to Russell Square Gardens.
• The museum complex covers a large urban block, with multiple internal levels and long corridors; moving between distant galleries can involve extended walks along stone floors and staircases.
• The nearest Underground stations include Tottenham Court Road, Holborn and Russell Square, all of which involve a walk along city streets to reach the museum’s main entrance on Great Russell Street.
• The official language is English and the currency is the pound sterling.

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Frequently asked questions about The British Museum

Where is The British Museum located?

The British Museum is in the Bloomsbury district of London, on Great Russell Street in the borough of Camden.

What can visitors expect inside The British Museum?

Visitors encounter galleries arranged around a large covered courtyard, with collections spanning archaeology, art and material culture from many regions and periods.

What makes The British Museum distinctive among London museums?

The combination of Enlightenment-era collections, Greek Revival architecture by Sir Robert Smirke and the glass-roofed Queen Elizabeth II Great Court gives the museum a layered historical character.