the british museum essay

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British Museum

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British Museum , in London , comprehensive national museum with particularly outstanding holdings in archaeology and ethnography . It is located in the Bloomsbury district of the borough of Camden .

Established by act of Parliament in 1753, the museum was originally based on three collections: those of Sir Hans Sloane ; Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford ; and Sir Robert Cotton . The collections (which also included a significant number of manuscripts and other library materials) were housed in Montagu House, Great Russell Street, and were opened to the public in 1759. The museum’s present building, designed in the Greek Revival style by Sir Robert Smirke , was built on the site of Montagu House in the period 1823–52 and has been the subject of several subsequent additions and alterations. Its famous round Reading Room was built in the 1850s; beneath its copper dome laboured such scholars as Karl Marx , Virginia Woolf , Peter Kropotkin , and Thomas Carlyle . In 1881 the original natural history collections were transferred to a new building in South Kensington to form the Natural History Museum , and in 1973 the British Museum’s library was joined by an act of Parliament with a number of other holdings to create the British Library . About half the national library’s holdings were kept at the museum until a new library building was opened at St. Pancras in 1997.

After the books were removed, the interior of the Reading Room was repaired and restored to its original appearance. In addition, the Great Court (designed by Norman Foster ), a glass-roofed structure surrounding the Reading Room, was built. The Great Court and the refurbished Reading Room opened to the public in 2000. Also restored in time for the 250th anniversary of the museum’s establishment was the King’s Library (1823–27), the first section of the newly constituted British Museum to have been constructed. It now houses a permanent exhibition on the Age of Enlightenment .

Among the British Museum’s most famous holdings are the Elgin Marbles , which were removed in the early 19th century from the Parthenon in Athens and shipped to England by arrangement of  Thomas Bruce, 7th Lord Elgin . The Greek government frequently demanded the return of the marbles, but the British Museum—claiming among other reasons that it had saved the marbles from certain damage and deterioration—did not accede, and the issue remained controversial. Other objects in the collection include Greek sculptures from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the Rosetta Stone , which provided the key to reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; the Black Obelisk and other Assyrian relics from the palace and temples at Calah (modern Nimrūd) and Nineveh ; exquisite gold, silver, and shell work from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur ; the so-called Portland Vase , a 1st-century- ce cameo glass vessel found near Rome; treasure from the 7th-century- ce ship burial found at Sutton Hoo , Suffolk; and Chinese ceramics from the Ming and other dynasties .

Exploring the British Museum: A Journey Through Time, Memory, and Cultures

London boasts a plethora of remarkable museums, each with unique treasures and stories. Among these cultural gems, the British Museum stands out as a testament to human history, art, and culture. Having visited many museums in London, I find myself consistently drawn back to the British Museum again and again.

The British Museum, located in Holborn, just off the famous Bloomsbury Square in London, is full of memories for me of previous visits and, equally, it is a place of collective, global memory on an enormous scale. Combining the rich heritage of the British Museum itself, established as far back as 1753, it also plays a role in revealing a great tapestry of ancient cultures that are displayed within its walls.

The British Museum holds the title of the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge and contains a vast collection of eight million works! It is the largest collection in the world and includes the controversial Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone.

Apparently in 2022, the British Museum experienced a significant increase in visitors; in total, attracting around four million in that year. A figure that makes it the third most-visited art museum globally. Putting its incredible artifacts aside for a moment, the historic architecture of the building alone is enough to keep me captivated.

In particular I am always keen to enter the courtyard, known as the Great Court that encircles the Reading Room, in order to gaze at the extraordinary fried egg, glass roof ceiling. Its dazzling brilliance, coupled with the white stone porticos, creates a visually stunning space that makes me want to look up and endlessly marvel at its thousands of unique panes of glass.

It is in fact the largest covered public square in Europe, and within this space there are sculptures from an impressive range of cultures that include, one from fifth-century Ireland, late Ming Dynasty China, ancient Nimrud (now in Iraq), and the Greek and Roman empires. In the centre of all this stands the circular Reading Room; world-famous in its own right as a former exalted centre of learning.

In terms of the British Museum’s history, the Great Court’s new ceiling (pictured at top) is actually relatively recent, and was only unveiled in December 2000. I remember reading about it in one of the Sunday papers and eagerly wanting to visit and see it for myself. Not only was I not disappointed, I remember telling my boyfriend’s Grandfather about it. His Grandfather happened to be a well known artist and sculptor and if I’m honest I was more than a little in awe of him. We both were. I had just finished telling him about what I had thought about seeing this marvellous sight, when he left the room. For a moment I didn’t know what to think, but then he came back with a sketch book and showed me his visit to the museum. He had sat in the Great Court and drawn sketches of the people that he had seen there, doing exactly what I had done, looking up.

As yet, on this private tour of the museum, we haven’t even ventured into any of the galleries, so I think it’s time for me to introduce you to my favourite one, the Enlightenment gallery. Housed in the oldest part of the building, it was originally designed for King George III's Library, and it is vast in scale. Filled with display cabinets of artifacts from the 18th century and bookcases that rise to the ceiling there is so much to take in. It’s a permanent exhibition and fascinating to me because it feels like it connects me to a time in history that I’m particularly interested in.

I’m moving on quite swiftly now, discarding thoughts and memories as they emerge so that I can take you to one more section of the museum that I love, and that is the Egyptian Sculpture gallery. With the poem ‘Ozymandias’ by Shelley, in my head, it’s incredible to contemplate the rise and fall of civilisations as you walk through this gallery. The length of time of the Egyptian civilisation, its impressive monuments, vast statues and intricate carvings now all that remains of this vanished civilisation. Meanwhile, I find myself debating the issue of ownership, the rightful location of these artifacts, whether that be Egypt or London. It’s a complex issue, and one that involves many points of view; such as the balance between cultural preservation and accessibility. I certainly don’t have the answer.

What is true though, is that the British Museum charges no admission fee, allowing free access to all those seeking cultural enrichment.

Currently, tickets are available for two temporary exhibitions; "Burma to Myanmar" and "Legion: Life in the Roman Army," to provide even more reasons to keep returning.

What the British Museum means to me, is an institution that sparks curiosity in human nature; in the magnificence of human endeavour to express itself, to witness itself and to be witnessed. Whether you are drawn to the Enlightenment gallery, the Egyptian Sculpture gallery, or the overarching architectural marvels, the British Museum is most certainly spectacular.

*    *    *

Sarah Agnew

Sarah Agnew is a heritage photographer at sarahagnew.co.uk and blogger on modernbricabrac.com . Find her on Facebook at @sarahagnewphotos .

The British Museum

The British Museum holds in trust for the nation and the world a collection of art and antiquities from ancient and living cultures.

The British Museum was founded in 1753, the first national public museum in the world. From the beginning it granted free admission to all ‘studious and curious persons’. The Museum was based on the practical principle that the collection should be put to public use and be freely accessible. It was also grounded in the Enlightenment idea that human cultures can, despite their differences, understand one another through mutual engagement. The Museum was to be a place where this kind of humane cross-cultural investigation could happen. It still is.

Housed in one of Britain’s architectural landmarks, the collection is one of the finest in existence, spanning two million years of human history. Visitor numbers have grown from around 5,000 a year in the eighteenth century to nearly 6 million today.

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Highlights of the British Museum: 10 Objects from Around the World

Tue 27 Sep 2022

When the doctor and avid collector Sir Hans Sloane donated his massive collection of 71,000 artefacts to the British State in 1753, the world’s first public national museum was born. Originally sited in the palatial Montagu House, the collection was free and open to ‘all studious and curious persons’ from the outset. The collection quickly grew, and a massive new neo-classical building designed by Robert Smirke was constructed between 1825 and 1857 to house the museum. As the British Empire reached the peak of its power and extent, objects kept flooding in from across the globe, and today the museum is home to a staggering 8 million objects. From ancient Greece to Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria and beyond, whatever you’re interested in you’ll find it here. You could easily spend weeks or months in the sprawling collection without seeing everything, but if you’re looking for somewhere to start then check out our guide to 10 highlights of the British Museum below! 

The Parthenon Marbles

Also known as the Elgin marbles, this collection of Greek sculptures taken from the Parthenon in Athens is possibly the most important grouping of classical sculpture in existence. The Parthenon is the centrepiece of the Athenian Acropolis, and was decorated with sculptures by the renowned ancient sculptor Phidias and his assistants between 443 and 437 BC. The majority of the sculptures in the British Museum come from the 160 metre-long frieze that ran around the building, and features scenes from ancient war and mythology. Comprising hundreds of human, animal and mythological figures, the highly naturalistic Parthenon marbles are widely considered the high-point of the High-Classical period of Greek sculpture. The Earl of Elgin, Thomas Bruce, removed a large proportion of the Parthenon frieze between 1801 and 1812 and had them carted back to Britain in a move whose legality has been questioned ever since. The marbles remain amongst the British Museum’s most controversial objects but are an absolute must-see for anyone interested in Classical art. 

Where to find it: Room 18, Ground Floor, Level 0

The Nereid Monument

This monumental tomb was likely constructed on the orders of Erbinna, the ruler of Xanthos in present-day Turkey. Although Xanthos was part of the Lycian empire, the influence of Greek models of classical architecture and sculpture were widely adopted in its monuments, and Erbinna’s tomb strongly recalls the form of a Greek temple. The monument is named after the highly expressive sculptures that were located between the tomb’s columns, which depict the Nereids - sea nymphs that provided protection to sailors on the stormy high seas. Although the temple’s reconstruction at the British Museum is hypothetical and the location of the individual sculptures open to debate, the Nereid monument gives a vivid sense of the refined culture of the Lycians.

Where to find it:  Room 17, Ground floor, Level 0

Coffin of Hornedjitef

Most visitors coming to the British Museum make a beeline for the Egyptian rooms, and for good reason. The museum’s display of mummies, sarcophagi and funerary objects from the ancient empire on the Nile are truly jaw-dropping, none more so than the coffin and mummy of the Egyptian high priest Hornedjitef, who was responsible for the Temple of Amun at Karnak in the Ptolemaic period. For ancient Egyptians like Hornedjitef, the mummification of the body was central to one’s chances of life after death. The delicately decorated inner case of the priest’s coffin is a masterful example of Egyptian art, and features a map of the celestial sphere to help him on his journey through the afterlife. It’s an eerie experience indeed to lock gazes with this powerful figure from across the centuries, his eye shining out from the golden features of his sculpted face. Also belonging to Hornedjitef’s funerary objects is a fascinating papyrus Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and invocations that were intended to aid the defunct priest’s difficult journey through the underworld and into the afterlife beyond. 

Where to find it: Room 63, Upper Floors, Level 3

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most important objects in the story of ancient Egypt, and was the final key to deciphering the hieroglyphic language that was for centuries one of the most enduring mysteries of Egyptology. The massive stone was originally part of a larger slab known as a stela , and has an official decree voicing support from the priests of Memphis for king Ptolemy V inscribed onto its surface. Crucially, the decree is recounted in three languages - hieroglyphics, or the official language of state, Demotic, or the popular script used in everyday Egyptian life, and Ancient Greek - the language of bureaucracy. As Ancient Greek was known to scholars when the stone was found at the end of the 18th century, it became possible to crack the code of the hieroglyphs by comparing the texts. The painstaking process was completed by French philologist Jean-François Champollion, paving the way for a new understanding of Egyptian history, society and culture. 

Where to find it:  Room 4, Ground Floor, Level 0

Winged Lions of Nimrud

With developed societies extending as far back as 10,000 BC, the Middle East was the cradle of ancient civilisation - it’s to the ancient Mesopatamians that we owe vital human discoveries such as the wheel, agriculture, writing, mathematics and much more. Between the 10th and 7th centuries BC the Neo-Assyrian empire was the world’s most powerful state, extending all the way from the Mediterranean in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east and the Caucasus Mountains  in the north, and a number of colossal sculptures surviving to this day are testament to the wealth and grandeur of this lost civilisation. These enormous 9th-century BC sculptures of winged lions with stylised human heads and long beards originally guarded the throne room of King Ashurnasipal the city of Nimrud (now in northern Iraq), and were believed to protect the city from harm. 

Where to find it:  Room 6, Ground Floor, Level 0

Bronze Portrait of the Emperor Augustus

The ancient Roman empire was one of the greatest and most powerful civilizations the world has ever known, and its story is inextricably tied up with the empire’s first and longest-serving emperor - Augustus. Rising to power in the aftermath of the bloody civil war that was unleashed in the wake of Julius Caesar’s assassination , Augustus proved to be a brilliant statesman and popular ruler. This remarkable bronze portrait captures the charisma, dignity and commanding nature of the man: his magnetic gaze will be sure to stop you in your tracks as you make your way through the museum. The sculpture was originally part of a full-body statue of the emperor that stood near the Roman empire’s southern border in Egypt. The area was captured by the Sudanese Kushite kingdom in 25 BC, and the Augustan statue dismembered, decapitated and buried. Augustus would only see the light of day again nearly 2,000 years later, when it was excavated by English archaeologist John Garstang in 1910.

Where to find it:  Room 70, Upper Floor, Level 3

Lewis Chessmen

Where to find it:  Room 40, Upper Floors, Level 3

Sutton Hoo Helmet

The Anglo-Saxon ship burial discovered at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1939 was one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of medieval British history, recently immortalised in Netflix drama The Dig . Amongst the hoard’s highlights is this jaw-dropping decorated helmet. It’s one of only four complete helmets to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period, and dates from the 6th or 7th century. Constructed from iron covered in copper alloy panels, designs on the helmet depict scenes of warriors and zoomorphic motifs, indicating that the helmet was a highly prestigious object, equal parts functional and aesthetic.  

Where to find it:  Room 41, Upper Floors, Level 3

Mexican Serpent Mosaic

An iconic example of central-American art, this stunning double-headed serpent was meticulously crafted from over 2,000 pieces of turquoise mosaic and shells attached to a wooden framework. The snake was sculpted sometime in the 15th or 16th century, and reflects the religious significance that the reptile held for the Aztec people, whose most important god, Quetzlcoatl, took the form of a feathered serpent. The Aztec empire was the most extensive and largest in the Americas before the arrival of European invaders, and serpent sculptures survive from across their vast territories. The shimmering turquoise tiles and gleaming bared teeth seem to make the snake come alive, and it’s not hard to imagine the powerful effect this object would have had when worn during rituals and religious ceremonies.

Where to find it:  Room 27, Ground Floor, Level 0

The Ife Head

This magnificent brass sculpture depicts the portrait of an Ooni, or sacred ruler of the Yoruba-speaking Kingdom of Ife in modern-day Nigeria wearing an elaborate headdress. The beautiful head dates from the 14th-century, and its striking naturalism and psychological intensity is characteristic of Ife sculpture. When this stunning object first went on display in the Museum in the 1930s it caused something of a controversy, with many viewers refusing to accept that 14th-century West African artists were capable of such realism. Today however the object is accepted for what it is - one of the shining cultural examples of a highly developed African kingdom.  

Where to find it:  Room 25, Lower Floor, Level -2

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British Museum, Imperialism and Empire

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Has the sun actually set on the British Empire in the twenty-first century? This paper seeks to answer this question by observing the history of the British Museum during the era of imperialism and empire. The first section discusses the evolution of the British public’s interest in cultural objects from the colonies, looking specifically at the original objects in the British Museum as well as how British wars, expeditions, personal collections, and world fairs contributed to the museum’s growth in the nineteenth century. In the following section, the question of a British national identity during this time period is examined through the displays in the British Museum. Finally, the stories of artifacts stolen from Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, and China during the nineteenth century as well as the repatriation efforts in recent years for these artifacts are described in order to demonstrate that the British Museum continued to be an imperialist institution even after the British colonies gained independence.

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Rooney, P.E. (2021). British Museum, Imperialism and Empire. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29901-9_62

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Why Is the British Museum Still Fighting to Keep the Parthenon’s Marble Sculptures? 

Removed from greece more than 200 years ago, they now fuel a post-brexit fight over who is civilized and who is a barbarian.

Passengers walk past copies of some of the Parthenon Sculptures displayed in the British Museum, at the Acropolis Metro station in Athens, Greece, in 2009. Courtesy of Thanassis Stavrakis/ Associated Press .

by Gabrielle Bruney | March 18, 2020

Two-and-a-half millennia ago, Athenian artist Phidias depicted the Greek myth of the Centauromachy in his sculptures for Athens’ Parthenon. Athens, the wealthy and powerful democratic nation-state, was of course analogous in the story to the civilized Lapiths; any foes the city faced resembled the barbaric Centaurs, who, as the tale goes, attempted to rape the bride at a Lapith wedding feast, launching a battle between the two peoples.

The Parthenon still stands all these centuries later, but Phidias’ work, which once adorned the building, is scattered between the Athens’ Acropolis Museum and the British Museum nearly 2,000 miles away.

It’s been more than 200 years since Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, obtained a royal Ottoman mandate to excavate near the Parthenon, document the sculptures, and “take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions, or sculptures therein.” An international debate has raged ever since: Did Britain’s Lord Elgin, who was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Greece, have the legal right to remove the sculptures? Should the British Museum, the current home of the sculptures, yield to Greek demands for their return?

Recently, a line in a potential post-Brexit trade deal being drafted by Europe demanding that Britain “return unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin” has reignited the debate. It’s an issue that, much like Brexit itself, boils down to a question of “Leave” or “Remain.” But perhaps it’s also a question of who, in modern Europe, are the civilized Lapiths, and who are the barbaric Centaurs?

To understand the turns the discussion has taken, it’s helpful to go back to the sculptures’ beginning, 2,500 years ago, when the Athens city-state was at the height of its power and influence—Euripides and Sophocles were writing their great tragedies; Socrates was still young.

After a Persian invasion destroyed an older temple, Athens celebrated Greece’s victory by building the Parthenon in its place. Its name means “the virgin’s abode,” and the temple was dedicated to Athena, the virgin goddess of war and wisdom. Though a temple, it was not strictly a religious site and was used as a treasury.

The building featured hundreds of sculptures by Phidias, one of the greatest artists of Ancient Greece, whose figures tell stories of gods, celebrations, and battles. Phidias installed finely carved sculptures on multiple levels of the building: the most fully modeled were on its pediment, while the 92 highly sculpted friezes known as the metopes, sat right below the roof. Finally, the frieze, in low relief, lined the walls just above the temple’s inner columns.

Like the Centauromachy, some of the stories carved into the marble are allegorical. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that the frieze contained exactly 192 horsemen, which was the number of Athenian warriors who died at the Battle of Marathon during the first Persian invasion of Greece.

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreau, accompanied by his wife Anda and daughter Margarita visit the British Museum in London in 2000. Courtesy of Alastair Grant/ Associated Press .

The beauty and detail of the sculptures are truly awe-inspiring—every fold of every peplos, the draping, sleeveless tunic favored by women of ancient Greece, is included; not even fingernails are neglected on a frieze that was mounted 30 feet above eye level. At the center of the temple stood a giant gold-plated statue of Athena herself, known as the Athena Parthenos. At some point, that sculpture disappeared from the temple and the historical record, its whereabouts unknown.

Over the millennia, the Parthenon has changed with times, states, and faiths. Around 450 A.D., it was rededicated to a different virgin saint, Mary of Nazareth, and next became a mosque after the Ottomans took Athens in the 15th century. When a Venetian shell hit the temple in 1687, during a war between the Turks and Venice, it became the temple we know now—a ruin.

That was how Elgin viewed it at the dawn of the 19th century, when, armed with his mandate from the royal Ottoman empire, he chiseled off and conveyed to England the sculptures, metopes, and friezes from the temple that would become known as the Parthenon Marbles.

It has since been the subject of fierce debate whether or not the hazy perimeters of the stunningly inexact document Elgin obtained allowed him to simply sift through the debris surrounding the Parthenon and collect any treasures that had already fallen from the building, or remove the works from the structure.

By contemporary standards, what happened at the Parthenon was deeply unethical. No major institution like the British Museum would today acquire artifacts from an occupied land under the permission of the invading force. But those who would return the sculptures see the question of lawfulness simply: “They were ‘stolen’ in that an alien Ottoman regime was in power at the time,” says Dame Janet Suzman, celebrated Shakespearean actress and chairperson of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

And this isn’t merely a modern interpretation of Elgin’s actions: Even in 1801 contemporary witnesses to the despoiling of the Acropolis were framing the situation as a tragedy. “Athena wept over her lost virginity,” one traveler wrote at the time.

In 1816, the British Museum bought the Marbles from Elgin. The Elgin Marbles, as they became known, became an instant phenomenon when they went on view the following year. Keats was observed gazing at them in an uninterruptible rapture, and wrote his famous sonnet “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” in response. The French Romantic Alphonse de Lamartine declared the Marbles “the most perfect poem ever written in stone on the surface of the earth.”

But they were also instantly controversial when they went on view—even in early 19th-century England, it was considered shocking for an ancient monument to be stripped of its adornments. Byron, Greece’s most famous foreign champion, was appalled, and dedicated five stanzas of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” to his outrage.

When Greece won its independence in 1832, the campaign for the Marbles’ return began in earnest.

The British Museum, would, in turn, begin to justify its possession of the marbles by positioning itself as preservers of the sculptures, which the Ottomans had taken to grinding up for limestone. More recently, the institution has gone on to argue that it sheltered and preserved the marbles from environmental damage as the Parthenon was subject to acid rain and other environmental pollutants.

But those who advocate for repatriation point to the shoddy record of British care for the marbles, starting with the two years some of the works spent at the bottom of the ocean when one of Elgin’s ships sank, and continuing through a 1930s effort to scrub them whiter-than-white with steel wool and household bleach. In 2014, Britain undermined its longstanding argument that the Marbles were too fragile to be moved by loaning them to a museum in St. Petersburg.

The controversy will not go away, especially at the British Museum’s Duveen Gallery, which attempts to help visitors envision the works as they were intended to be displayed. Here, it’s impossible to escape the fact that this is not the way these works were supposed to be displayed. The sculptures of the east pediment are arranged at one end of the rectangular gallery; the sculptures of the west at the other, while friezes and metopes line the walls in between at eye level. This attempt to emulate what was lost in stripping the stones from the Parthenon only underscores one of the most convincing arguments cited by those who would repatriate the Marbles to Athens: this art is intensely site-specific.

“This case is unique because the Parthenon itself is standing there,” says political sociologist and University of Virginia researcher Fiona Rose-Greenland. “So you have the idea that these things are actually ornaments for a structure that exists. It’s not like they were statues pulled out of the ash heap of some building that’s no longer there.”

The Duveen Gallery does contribute one major benefit to viewers—they’re no longer dozens of feet from the ground, as they were when they decorated the Parthenon. But Phidias explicitly carved the sculptures with this distance in mind; figures in the frieze were sculpted to account for the distorting perspective of eyes 35 feet below.

Though no one will ever again stand at the Parthenon and gaze up at the sculptures above, it would be possible for visitors to see the art closer to its birthplace. Partially in response to the British Museum’s long-held contention that Greece lacked a suitable home for the Marbles, the country in 2003 opened the Acropolis Museum, where the Parthenon sculptures owned by Greece are now displayed. The Parthenon itself is visible from the galleries of the Acropolis Museum, “an eye flicker [away] from the picture window in the dedicated Parthenon Gallery,” according to Suzman.

Visitors at Athens’ Acropolis Museum look at the vista to the ancient Temple of Parthenon. Courtesy of Petros Giannakouris/ Associated Press .

Though a British government spokesperson recently said that returning the marbles is “ not up for discussion as part ” of the Brexit trade deal, there are precedents for similar returns of ancient art. In 2006, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed to repatriate to Italy the Euphronios Krater, a terra cotta bowl that predates the Parthenon by approximately 100 years. The Krater may be the finest surviving example of ancient Greek pottery, and in 1972 the Met purchased it for more than one million dollars, a staggering amount at the time. But the bowl had been looted from an Italian tomb, and eventually the museum agreed to return it to Italy, in exchange for three lesser early vases.

Opponents of repatriation in the op-ed pages of the British press trot out the rather hoary argument that the return of the Marbles could lead to the gradual emptying of the world’s encyclopedic museums. The Rosetta Stone would follow the marbles out the doors of the British Museum shortly thereafter, then Berlin’s Neues Museum would be forced to ship its bust of Nefertiti back to Egypt. In fact, Egyptian wings the world over would be empty husks.

It is in global institutions like the British Museum, these advocates argue, that art achieves its true cosmopolitan promise. If art is for all peoples and all ages, then it’s most appropriate that it be showcased in museums featuring art made by all peoples during all ages, rather than segregated in far-flung state museums that serve narratives of glorious nationalistic pasts. Shortly after the Euphronios Krater was returned to Italy, a reporter for the New York Times noted that the bowl didn’t seem to attract many visitors in its new-old home. Is the Krater better served at the relatively little-known Cerveteri Museum where it now resides than it was at the Met, with its more than 6 million annual visitors?

But, “if really what we’re talking about is equal share for all, and a universal culture, then why isn’t there an old Dutch masters museum in Namibia?” asks Rose-Greenland, “Why isn’t the Art Institute of Chicago handing over its exquisite collection of French 19th-century watercolors to a Peruvian museum for a long-term loan?”

“Ownership necessarily betrays historical balances of power,” says James Cuno, art curator, historian, and president and CEO of the Getty Trust. But he argues that the fact that Western developed nations possess a disproportionate share of the world’s encyclopedic museums doesn’t mean that the idea of such museums is invalid. The cure isn’t fewer encyclopedic museums, but more of them, in more countries.

More problematic is another question raised by some supporters of global museums—that contemporary communities lack serious claims on objects built for and by people who lived centuries ago on the same patch of earth. The logic of this objection is that either art knows no age or national boundary, or it so grounded in its context that every other culture and era is equally without claim to it.

In his book Cosmpolitanism , Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that parsing thousands of years of human creation into categories of “yours” and “mine” isn’t easy, particularly since it can hardly be argued that the ancients were creating art with any of us in mind. He points out that the Euphronios Krater, found in and returned to Italy, was actually a Greek bowl. “Patrimony, here,” he writes, “equals imperialism plus time.”

In the case of the Parthenon Marbles, however, the suggestion that contemporary Greek people are not the legitimate heirs of Ancient Greece has a very ugly history. Elgin himself remarked that “The Greeks of today do not deserve such wonderful works of antiquity,” and “[Modern Greeks] have nothing whatsoever in common with [Ancient Greeks]. He made this claim based on the idea, popularized by the 19th-century Austrian travel writer and theorist Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, that modern Greeks are descended from Slavs. “The race of the Hellenes has been wiped out in Europe,” he wrote in 1830. “Physical beauty, intellectual brilliance, innate harmony and simplicity, art, competition, city, village, the splendour of column and temple … [have] disappeared from the surface of the Greek continent.”

Though controversial from its inception and now debunked, Fallmerayer’s implicitly racist theory has appeared as recently as 2015 in the conservative German newspaper Die Welt , in an article in which the author argued that Greece was the perpetual demolisher of Eurozone order, from the early 19th century through austerity. He writes that Greeks are not “descendants of a Pericles or Socrates” but “a mixture of Slavs, Byzantines, and Albanians”—less worthy of a place in the European order, pretenders to admission to the EU. As if foretold in Phideas’s sculptures of the Centauromachy, the discussion has been reduced to an explicitly racist rumination on who inherits the title of civilization from the Ancient Greeks, and who is cast out as a barbarian.

The works of Phidias were completed in 432 B.C., but it might be argued that the Parthenon Marbles were created in 1687 when that shell turned the Parthenon into a husk and many of its adornments to dust. These were the sculptures that Elgin began excavating in 1801— and no one can argue that the 19th-century Greeks who watched the Parthenon defiled are unrelated to the Greeks today who clamor for their return.

The Parthenon Marbles as they are now are not the same art as the works Phidias painted and sculpted. Recreations of the works are almost jarring—their bright colors seem garish to contemporary eyes—accustomed as we are to the cool white scrubbed marble that western curators claimed showed the elegant simplicity of Ancient Greece. And of course, in the place of missing faces and limbs we project our own imaginings of the ancients, projections that have become part of the works themselves. As Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlof writes in The Sculptures of the Parthenon , “The ancient artifact naturally possesses a certain sublimity from the sheer passing of time, but also because it represents an unfilled and unfillable void.”

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Ancient cyprus in the british museum: essays in honour of veronica tatton-brown . edited by thomas kiely. 295mm. pp 112, 95 figs plus line drawings. british museum research publication 180, london: british museum, 2009. isbn 9780861591800. £25 (pbk)..

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2012

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• Why is the British Museum always in trouble?

Partly because it was bad. But partly because it was good

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“T he Essex Antiquities” doesn’t have quite the same ring. The sculptures that were hacked from the Parthenon in the early 19th century go by many names. They are called the “Parthenon Sculptures”, the “Parthenon Marbles” and, by traditionalists, “the Elgin Marbles” but never known by the name of the county in the south-east of England. Yet in 1902 part of the frieze from the Acropolis turned up in a rockery in a charming garden in Essex. Quite how it got there, as Mary Beard, a classicist, puts it, “we have no idea.”

The British Museum gets in trouble precisely because people do know how it acquired its bits of the Parthenon, and much else besides. This week’s drama was a spat between the visiting Greek prime minister, who likened the sculptures’ presence in London to cutting “the Mona Lisa in half”, and the British prime minister, who threw a tantrum in response and cancelled a planned meeting with his counterpart.

The Parthenon Sculptures are not the museum’s only controversial items. In recent years it has also been embroiled in arguments over the Benin Bronzes (Nigeria wants them back), the Rosetta Stone (Egyptians want that one) and the Easter Island statues (Rapa Nui claims them). It gets in trouble because it has far too many objects—8m at the last count, which is considered greedy. More recently, it has got in trouble for having too few—it let 2,000 items get stolen, which is clearly incompetent. It has been accused of dealing in stolen goods, exhibiting “pilfered” objects and generally being “Brutish”.

Not without cause. Many of its objects have objectionable back stories. Lord Elgin removed parts of the Parthenon so carelessly that they fell to the ground and shattered; the boat onto which others were loaded promptly sank. One infamous curator, E.A. Wallis Budge, bragged about how he had smuggled objects out of Egypt illegally by variously cutting them up, hiding them in books and, in one case, tunnelling into the back of a house while Egyptian officials guarded its front. “All Luxor rejoiced,” he wrote when he filched them. UNESCO would have been less thrilled.

Such looting should be seen in context, however. “One mustn’t judge Elgin unusually harshly,” says Paul Cartledge, emeritus professor of Greek at Cambridge. For Elgin was egregious but not exceptional. He wasn’t the only one to nick things from the Parthenon: parts of it were hacked off as souvenirs and left in the pockets of pleased tourists. Museums in four other countries have bits of the marbles. If Elgin “hadn’t got the Parthenon, a Frenchman would have got it”. An alarming thought.

Indeed competitive nationalism runs throughout the history of museums. Nationalism provided an excuse to take things. Budge argued that it was better for him to nick a mummy and bring it back to the British Museum since it has “a far better chance of being preserved” there than in Egypt. It is commonly said that the Rosetta Stone has three scripts on it but as Neil MacGregor, a former director of the museum, has pointed out, it has four. On the side it reads “Captured by the British Army in 1801”.

Nationalism also helped spur museums into existence. The British Museum was one of the first institutions to use the word “British” in its title and the first national museum to open its doors to the public, in 1759. It still spurs things on today. Most people never hear of an artefact until it becomes the focus of a row between countries, as the Parthenon Sculptures did again this week. The British Museum’s website lists 1,699 objects also associated with Elgin. Since no nations are arguing about them, no one cares.

The British Museum’s history is flawed, then, but also influential. Today, it is taken for granted that the obvious thing to do with old objects is to gather them all in a room, add labels, a loo and a gift shop selling Rosetta Stone rubbers, and then open it all up to the public. This was not always so. The British Museum is in trouble in part because it treated objects badly but also because it treated them well. Unlike the bits of the Parthenon that disappeared in tourists’ pockets, its sculptures are still there to get cross about. And, on the bright side, it also occasionally thwarted the French. ■

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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The Brutish museum?”

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IELTS Essay Task 1: Museums

by Dave | Sample Answers | 2 Comments

This is an IELTS writing task 1 sample answer essay on the topic of a bar chart showing museum admissions in London from the real IELTS exam.

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The bar chart shows the number of visitors to four London museums.

The bar chart compares attendance figures for museums in London over a period from June to December. Looking from an overall perspective, it is readily apparent that only the British Museum grew in popularity, while the others saw steep or moderate declines. In terms of overall figures, the British Museum was highest and the National Museum lowest throughout.

In June, the History Museum (410,000), the British Museum (420,000) and the Science Museum (430,000) had similar figures with the National Museum the outlier at just 210,000 visitors. Through July, numbers for all museums declined gradually, with the exception of the British Museum which was stable. August saw a shift in the pattern as the History and British Museum soared to 600,000 and 710,000, respectively. The Science Museum was unchanged but National Museum admissions doubled to 380,000.

By September, figures had fallen back to 390,000 and 590,000 for the History and British Museum, in turn, while the Science Museum rose to 500,000 visitors and the National Museum dipped to 200,000. At the end of the period, the History Museum continued to fall (270,000) along with the British Museum (470,000), National Museum (190,000), and the Science Museum (300,000).

1. The bar chart compares attendance figures for museums in London over a period from June to December. 2. Looking from an overall perspective, it is readily apparent that only the British Museum grew in popularity, while the others saw steep or moderate declines. 3. In terms of overall figures, the British Museum was highest and the National Museum lowest throughout.

• Paraphrase what the graph shows.
• Write a clear overview summarising the major trends and differences.
• Add an extra sentence to be sure that you have covered everything.

1. In June, the History Museum (410,000), the British Museum (420,000) and the Science Museum (430,000) had similar figures with the National Museum the outlier at just 210,000 visitors. 2. Through July, numbers for all museums declined gradually, with the exception of the British Museum which was stable. 3. August saw a shift in the pattern as the History and British Museum soared to 600,000 and 710,000, respectively. 4. The Science Museum was unchanged but National Museum admissions doubled to 380,000.

• Begin writing about the differences.
• Compare as much as possible.
• Move on to the next category to describe.
• Try to include all the data you can.

1. By September, figures had fallen back to 390,000 and 590,000 for the History and British Museum, in turn, while the Science Museum rose to 500,000 visitors and the National Museum dipped to 200,000. 2. At the end of the period, the History Museum continued to fall (270,000) along with the British Museum (470,000), National Museum (190,000), and the Science Museum (300,000).

• Write about the rest of the information.
• Make sure you have detailed all the information .

What do the words in bold below mean? Take some notes on a piece of paper to aid your memory:

The bar chart compares attendance figures for museums in London over a period from June to December. Looking from an overall perspective, it is readily apparent that only the British Museum grew in popularity , while the others saw steep or moderate declines. In terms of overall figures, the British Museum was highest and the National Museum lowest throughout .

In June, the History Museum (410,000), the British Museum (420,000) and the Science Museum (430,000) had similar figures with the National Museum the outlier at just 210,000 visitors. Through July, numbers for all museums declined gradually , with the exception of the British Museum which was stable . August saw a shift in the pattern as the History and British Museum soared to 600,000 and 710,000, respectively . The Science Museum was unchanged but National Museum admissions doubled to 380,000.

By September, figures had fallen back to 390,000 and 590,000 for the History and British Museum, in turn, while the Science Museum rose to 500,000 visitors and the National Museum dipped to 200,000. At the end of the period , the History Museum continued to fall (270,000) along with the British Museum (470,000), National Museum (190,000), and the Science Museum (300,000).

compares shows differences between

attendance figures number of people going there

period time

looking from an overall perspective, it is readily apparent that overall

grew in popularity more people went there

steep fast, large

moderate a little

in terms of when it comes to

highest biggest

lowest throughout smallest the whole time

similar figures numbers about the same

outlier exception

through to the end of

declined gradually went down slowly

exception different from the norm

stable unchanged

shift change

pattern trend

soared rose a lot

respectively in turn

unchanged stable

doubled increased 2x

fallen back decreased after increasing before

dipped fell

at the end of the period by the end of the time surveyed

continued to fall kept decreasing

Pronunciation

kəmˈpeəz   əˈtɛndəns ˈfɪgəz   ˈpɪərɪəd   ˈlʊkɪŋ frɒm ən ˈəʊvərɔːl pəˈspɛktɪv ,  ɪt ɪz ˈrɛdɪli əˈpærənt ðæt   gruː ɪn ˌpɒpjʊˈlærɪti stiːp   ˈmɒdərɪt   ɪn tɜːmz ɒv   ˈhaɪɪst   ˈləʊɪst θru(ː)ˈaʊt ˈsɪmɪlə ˈfɪgəz   ˈaʊtˌlaɪə   θruː   dɪˈklaɪnd ˈgrædjʊəli ɪkˈsɛpʃən   ˈsteɪbl ʃɪft   ˈpætən   sɔːd   rɪsˈpɛktɪvli ʌnˈʧeɪnʤd   ˈdʌbld   ˈfɔːlən bæk   dɪpt   æt ði ɛnd ɒv ðə ˈpɪərɪəd kənˈtɪnju(ː)d tuː fɔːl  

Vocabulary Practice

Remember and fill in the blanks:

The bar chart c___________s a_______________s for museums in London over a period from June to December. L__________________________________t only the British Museum g____________________y , while the others saw s______p or m___________e declines. I_________f overall figures, the British Museum was h_______t and the National Museum l_________________t .

In June, the History Museum (410,000), the British Museum (420,000) and the Science Museum (430,000) had s_______________s with the National Museum the o__________r at just 210,000 visitors. T_________h July, numbers for all museums d________________y , with the e__________n of the British Museum which was s_______e . August saw a s______t in the p_________n as the History and British Museum s_________d to 600,000 and 710,000, r____________y . The Science Museum was u__________d but National Museum admissions d_______d to 380,000.

By September, figures had f_____________k to 390,000 and 590,000 for the History and British Museum, in turn, while the Science Museum rose to 500,000 visitors and the National Museum d_________d to 200,000. A___________________________d , the History Museum c__________________l (270,000) along with the British Museum (470,000), National Museum (190,000), and the Science Museum (300,000).

Listening Practice

Listen to the related topic below and practice with these activities :

Reading Practice

Read more and use these ideas to practice:

https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/museums-galleries/museums-with-virtual-tours

Speaking Practice

Practice with the following related questions from the real IELTS speaking exam:

• Should kids be taught art from a young age?
• Is it important for all people to get the opportunity to make art?
• Should art be sold or kept in museums for the public to see?
• Why is art sold for such large sums of money?
• What is the attitude to art in your country?

Writing Practice

Practice with the related graph below related to film production in 5 countries and then check with my sample answer:

IELTS Task 1 Essay: Bar Chart (Education)

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The bar chart compares attendance figures for 4 museums in London over a five-month period from June to December. The overall popularity for all museums declined over this period of time with the notable exception of the British museum in which more people went there. Furthermore, the British Museum was also the most popular apart from June. The only two groups to see no change in attendance were the British  Museum from June to July at approximately 420,000, and the Science Museum from July to August at exactly 400,000. For the other three months, the British Museum experienced a continued decrease from 720,000 in august to 460,000 at the end of the period. The trend for the History Museum was almost identical, but their numbers of visitors were always smaller as the gap widened dramatically: by 10,000 and 20,000 in the first two months, in turn, to less than 100,000 in august and 200,000 in the two final months. The science museum started at the highest point of June with 430,000 admissions, soaring to precisely 500,000 in September before a pullback to 300,000 in December. Finally, the national museum stayed at around 200,000 for the majority of the time described, remaining the least popular museum despite a peak of 380,000 in august.

Nice writing!

Really good comparison of the data and very accurate as well.

Careful with some slightly informal verbs and capitilization – otherwise really strong!

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250 Years of The British Museum

The British Museum houses one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of cultural artifacts. And with the exception of two World Wars, when parts of the collection were evacuated, it has remained open since opening on January 15, 1759

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The repatriation debate: should museums return colonial artefacts?

The british museum is willing to loan out the objects it once pillaged (or bought), but is that enough.

Workmen deliver a portion of the Parthenon frieze, the socalled Elgin Marbles, to the British Museum in 1961. Greece has demanded the sculptures be returned to Athens. Getty

Imagine the British Museum in London without Egypt's Rosetta Stone. The city's Victoria and Albert Museum without Ethiopia's Maqdala treasures. Or the British capital's Natural History Museum without the scientific wonders that are Gibraltar's Neanderthal skulls.

After a summer of repatriation requests, the debate over the right of British museums to retain contested artefacts – objects that were often "removed" by Brit ish citizens from territories once ruled by the UK during its centuries as a colonial power – has gathered pace. In August, a Jamaican government minister requested that the British Museum hand back objects taken from the island when it was a UK colony. Only a month earlier, renowned Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif resigned her position as a member of the museum's Board of Trustees, citing its "immovability on issues of critical concern", including repatriation. 

But speaking to The National , Soueif acknowledge s that "on the issue of restitution there is no one-size-fits-all solution".

"It has to be a case-by-case deliberation, and the solutions [must] stretch across the whole spectrum," sa ys Soueif, 69, who had served as a trustee since 2012 .

She says the spectrum ranged "from the object remaining where it is in the 'colonial' museum, but is provided with an appropriate context, to the object returning to the location where it was made – with lots of varied possibilities in between".  

A history of disputes 

Last month, a historic dispute between London and Athens over the so-called Elgin Marbles reared its head once more. Gree k Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a request to take the marbles from Britain on loan, with a view to putting them on show in 2021 to commemorate the Greek War of Independence, which began in 1821.

On display at the British Museum, this collection of classical Greek marble sculptures assumed their name after they were acquired by Britain's Lord Elgin from Greece in the early 1800s. But, according to media reports, the museum's precondition for any loan would be to acknowledge British ownership of the sculptures, which are about 2,500 years old and known in Greece as the Parthenon Marbles. But former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras was critical of the notion, writing on Facebook that, far from asking to simply borrow them, Mitsotakis "should ask for the permanent return of the Parthenon Marbles".

As a result of its controversial colonial past, Britain has been the target of frequent and varied attempts to return objects seized from regions including the Middle East and Africa in eras gone by.

Take the Rosetta Stone, for instance. This ancient slab of granodiorite was discovered by French troops in 1799 after Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt a year earlier. But after France's defeat by Britain in 1801, the stone fell into British hands. For more than 200 years, the artefact – inscribed in 196 BC and used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs – has been exhibited at the British Museum. 

But last year, Tarek Tawfik, director of Cairo's Grand Egyptian Museum, asked for it back.

"It would be great to have the Rosetta Stone back in Egypt but this is something that will still need a lot of discussion and co-operation," Tawfik told London newspaper the Evening Standard last year.

How the UK is behind when it comes to repatriation

Today, restitution efforts have become more pronounced as painful attempts by the UK to extricate itself from the European Union continue to stir debate over the country's place in the world and its colonial legacy.

British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and filmmaker, David Olusoga, sa ys Britain ha s often lacked the sense of empathy necessary to understand why its former colonial territories long to see removed objects repatriated. "That is, to imagine what it is like to live in a country in which your national treasures – things that are of historical, cultural and sometimes religious and spiritual significance – are in the museums of other countries," says Olusoga, who personally advocates restitution. "Often as a result of unfair purchases or historic acts of violence, invasion and colonisation."

Olusoga, who is also a professor of public history at England's University of Manchester, sa ys Britain is "behind the curve" as far as repatriation is concerned. While museums across western Europe are filled with treasures lifted during the age of empire and colonisation, some nations have taken steps to right perceived wrongs of the past that took place under British rule. 

In May, the German Historical Museum in Berlin announced that it was returning a 15th-century artefact known as the Stone Cross to Namibia. And late last year, a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron called for museums in France to return artworks removed from African nations during the country's own colonial period.

Why it may not be such a great idea

But not everybody thinks restitution is such a good idea, relevant or even helpful. Tiffany Jenkins , author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums, and Why They Should Stay There , has challenge d the idea that removed objects should be repatriated. She says that asking for artefacts to be returned to "repair the sins of colonisation" is an unwarranted "politicisation of culture".

She also contends that the clamour for restitution, not least from British critics of UK museums, has arisen from “an insecurity and crisis in the idea of what a museum is for”.

"In recent times, museums have been seen as simply reflecting the elite and offering nothing to anybody else," she explain s. "And the positive things that museums can do – that is showing different cultures and times and places to different people – have been abandoned, or people are not as confident about [their role]."

But a representative for the British Museum t ells The National that "internationally, the museum works extensively in partnership with museums across the globe to consider, understand and reflect … complicated shared histories".  

"We lend many thousands of objects all over the world . For example, with regard to our work in Africa, we have committed to lending objects from the collection on a rotating basis to the planned new Royal Museum Benin in Benin City, within a three-year timeframe."

Soueif has no intention of returning to her British Museum role , saying that "the changes I think are necessary need a younger person who has a lot more time" . But she maintains that the debate about restitution should continue.

"There's a global conversation that has started and needs to be encouraged," she sa ys. "It's about the relationship of the south and the north, about cultural 'property' and what constitutes it, and about who gets to determine how objects with cultural or heritage significance are used . It's a conversation that needs to be entered into with an open mind and with a will to explore the past and the future. "

15 Best Museums in London, England in 2024

Updated : July 02, 2024

Michelle Palmer

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Museum lovers will be delighted by the abundance of museums in London. Whether your interest is in history, art or science, there is a museum for you, and many of the museums are free, an excellent feature for budget-conscious travelers and those traveling with kids. History museums in particular offer a wide range of topics. Some museums focus on the development of London, such as the National Maritime Museum, while others take an interesting look at recent history like the Museum of Brands. Art museums range from portraiture and modernism to exploration of British painters and more. Science enthusiasts should visit the London Natural History Museum to learn about prehistoric animals, geology and other topics. Be sure to visit some of the best museums in London, not only are they entertaining and educational, they are a great indoor activity.

At the best free museums in London, you'll find a range of exhibits about history, science and art — even a house museum made the list. These free museums are a fun way to experience culture in London on a budget and are some of the top things to do in London .

1. British Museum

The collection at the British Museum is wide and varied, if controversial due to Britain's history of imperialism and colonialism, but it is undeniably on of the top free museums in London. On three floors, you can see art and artifacts including textiles, paintings and pottery, to contemporary art from many different countries and regions. While here, you can see items from Egypt including sculptures from temples and tombs and even the Rosetta Stone, a slab which helped to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs. There are also galleries about Europe from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment and into the 20th century.

The British Museum is free to enter, except for some special exhibitions. You should book your tickets ahead of time to ensure entry to this busy museum. You can tour the museum on your own, download their app to purchase an audio guide or plan ahead for a tour with a guide. Some guided tours cost like the 90-minute Around the World Tour, while others are free, like the 70-minute Desire, Love and Identity Tour that explores LGBTQ history.

2. London Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum in London resembles a cathedral, and within the beautiful building, you can tour the many galleries, which are a delight for adults and children who love learning about creatures from different eras. There are dinosaur skeletons including a Tyrannosaurus rex and the skull of a triceratops. You can also see models and fossils of prehistoric sea animals, the skeleton of a giant ground sloth and a mastodon skeleton. In addition to all the animals, you can also see a meteorite, learn how volcanoes and earthquakes have shaped our planet, and visit a gallery about minerals, gems and rocks.

The London Natural History Museum is free to enter but book your tickets ahead of time to help save time at the door. Special exhibitions may cost to enter.

3. National Gallery

Located at Trafalgar Square (one of London's famous landmarks ), the National Gallery , founded in 1824, is the best art museum in London to see paintings by Western European artists from the late 13th century to the 20th century. On a visit to the museum, you can see works by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Titian, Élisabeth Louise Vigée and many more.

The museum is free to enter, except for some special exhibitions, although it's recommended that visitors book their tickets ahead of time whether visiting the free galleries or the paid exhibits. Audio tours are available for a fee and require the use of your smartphone and headphones. The museum also offers an app that helps children learn about and engage with art.

4. National Maritime Museum

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ESL Reading Comprehension + Essay Worksheets on the British Museum - London

Subject: English language learning

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

4 June 2024

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This Fantastic ESL Reading Comprehension + Writing Activity Worksheet (3 PDF Printable Pages) on the British Museum (London) is great to train Language skills in English (reading comprehension + writing skills).

Ideal participants for this ESL Activity are English Foreign Students at High School and Middle School (7th -12th Grade; teens).

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This Product can also be Great for English Second Language Centers or any ESL tutor around the world.

This ESL Reading Activity on the British Museum can be great for intermediate English as a Second Language Learners.

This Stimulating ESL Reading Comprehension + Writing Activity (PDF Printable Worksheet; 3 Pages) includes:

• a Text on the British Museum
• 11 Text-related Questions (with space for answers)
• 2 Essay Prompts (writing an essay on your opinion on preserving human heritage and historical findings + writing if your would like to go to visit the British Museum and what attractions you would like to visit)

Learning English as a second Language can sometimes be a true struggle to many Students out there. Endless Lists of Words and Grammatical Rules that at times happen not to be Clear to Teachers too! Is it worthy to get Stressed for such few Results? Absolutely NO! ESL with Alan has Created a BRAND NEW RESOURCE to make English both FUN and EFFICIENT!

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British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years

The space, once used by the likes of karl marx, is finally available for all visitors to the london institution to see.

Since 2013, the the Reading Room has been used as a storage and archive space, with tours introduced last year

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The British Museum’s vast and imposing Round Reading Room has reopened this week to all visitors after being closed for the past 11 years.

Designed by Sydney Smirke and opened in 1857, the reading room at the heart of the museum was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome and is considered one of London’s most impressive architectural wonders.

“Using cast iron, concrete, glass and the latest heating and ventilation systems, it was a masterpiece of mid-19th century technology,” the British Museum says on its website. When it opened, it contained 25 miles of shelving. Users had to apply for a ticket: among those who did so successfully were Karl Marx, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

In 1997 the books were moved to a new building, and the room was restored and opened to all visitors in 2000. It closed again in 2013 and has since been used for storage and the handling of the archives. Last year, the museum’s chairman George Osborne said the continued closure is “not acceptable,” and after that, weekly 20-minute tours were introduced. Now, members of the public can enter the space without a tour or a ticket.

History | Updated: July 1, 2024 | Originally Published: March 1, 2007

The Real Story Behind the Star-Spangled Banner, the Flag That Inspired the National Anthem

How the flag that flew proudly over Fort McHenry in September 1814 made its way to the Smithsonian

Cate Lineberry ; Updated by Meilan Solly

On a rainy September 13, 1814, British warships sent a downpour of shells and rockets onto Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, relentlessly pounding the American fort for 25 hours. The bombardment, known as the Battle of Baltimore , came only weeks after British forces attacked Washington, D.C., burning the United States Capitol, the Treasury and the White House (then known as the President’s House). It was another chapter in the ongoing War of 1812 .

A week earlier, Francis Scott Key , a 35-year-old American lawyer, had boarded the flagship of the British fleet on the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of persuading the enemy to release the physician William Beanes, a friend who had recently been arrested. Key’s tactics were successful, but because he and his companions had gained knowledge of the impending attack on Baltimore, the British did not yet let them go. Allowed to return to their own vessel, the Americans remained under heavy scrutiny. On September 13, Key and Beanes watched as the barrage of Fort McHenry began some eight miles away.

“It seemed as though mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone,” Key later wrote . But when darkness arrived, he saw only red erupting in the night sky. Given the scale of the attack, he was certain the British would win. The hours passed slowly, but in the clearing smoke of “the dawn’s early light” on September 14, he saw the American flag —not the British Union Jack—flying over the fort, announcing an American victory.

Key put his thoughts on paper while still on board the ship, setting his words to the tune of a popular English song. His brother-in-law, commander of a militia at Fort McHenry, read Key’s work and had it distributed under the name “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” The Baltimore Patriot newspaper soon published it, and within weeks, Key’s poem, now called “The Star-Spangled Banner,” appeared in print across the country, immortalizing his words and forever naming the flag it celebrated. The song remained popular throughout the 19th century, emerging as a symbol of unity during the Civil War, but only became the U.S.’s official national anthem in 1931.

The flag that inspired Key’s composition still survives today, though it’s fragile and worn by time. First lent to the Smithsonian Institution in 1907, this iconic artifact is now on view in its own state-of-the-art gallery at the National Museum of American History (NMAH).

“The Star-Spangled Banner is a symbol of American history that ranks with the Statue of Liberty and the Charters of Freedom,” said Brent D. Glass , the museum’s then-director, in 2007. “The fact that it [was] entrusted to the National Museum of American History is an honor.”

The flag’s beginnings

The flag’s history starts not with Key, but rather a year earlier, with Major George Armistead , the commander of Fort McHenry. Knowing that his fort was a likely British target, Armistead, in the summer of 1813, told the commander of Baltimore’s defenses that he needed a flag—a big one: “We, sir, are ready at Fort McHenry to defend Baltimore against invading by the enemy … except that we have no suitable ensign to display over the Star Fort, and it is my desire to have a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.”

Armistead soon hired a 37-year-old widow and professional flagmaker, Mary Young Pickersgill , to make a 30-by-42-foot garrison flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes, one for each of the then-15 states. Over the next six or so weeks, Pickersgill, her daughter, two of her nieces, a 13-year-old indentured servant and possibly her mother used 300 yards of English wool bunting to sew the flag. They made the stars, each measuring two feet in diameter, from cotton—a luxury item at the time. Initially, the group worked in Pickersgill’s home (now a private museum known as the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House ), but as their work progressed, they needed more room, so they moved to a brewery across the street. On August 19, 1813, the flag was delivered to Fort McHenry.

For making the Star-Spangled Banner, Pickersgill was paid $405.90 (almost $8,000 today ). She received another $168.54 (around $3,300 today ) for sewing a smaller, 17-by-25-foot storm flag, likely using the same design. It was this storm flag—not the garrison flag now known as the Star-Spangled Banner—that actually flew during the battle. The garrison flag, according to eyewitness accounts, wasn’t raised until the morning of September 14, 1814.

Armistead remained in command of Fort McHenry for the rest of his short life. Historians are unsure how the Armistead family came into possession of the flag, but upon the military officer’s death in 1818, his wife, Louisa Hughes Armistead, inherited it. She likely sewed a red upside-down “V” (or perhaps the start of the letter “A,” for Armistead) onto the flag. Louisa is also thought to have begun the tradition of giving away pieces of the flag to honor her husband’s memory, as well as the memories of the soldiers who defended the fort under his command.

When Louisa died in 1861, she passed the flag down to her daughter, Georgiana Armistead Appleton , over the legal objections of her son. “Georgiana was the only child born at the fort, and she was named for her father,” said Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss , then a textile conservator at NMAH, in 2007. “Louisa wanted Georgiana to have it.”

The missing pieces

In 1873, Appleton lent the flag to George Preble , a flag historian who had previously thought the artifact was lost. That same year, Preble had the first known photograph of the flag taken at the Boston Navy Yard. He then exhibited it at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, where it remained until 1876.

While the Star-Spangled Banner was under Preble’s care, Appleton allowed him to give away pieces of the flag as he saw fit. She, too, had given away cuttings of the flag to other Armistead descendants, as well as family friends. Appleton once noted , “Had we given all that we have been importuned for, little would be left to show.” This family tradition continued through 1880, when Armistead’s grandson gave away the last documented piece, according to Thomassen-Krauss.

Several of these cuttings from the Star-Spangled Banner have been located over the years, including about a dozen owned by NMAH . “We’re aware of at least a dozen more that exist in other museums and private collections,” said curator Kathleen Kendrick in 2007.

But a missing 15th star has never been found. “There’s a legend that the star was buried with one of the soldiers from Fort McHenry; another says that it was given to Abraham Lincoln,” Kendrick explained. “But no real evidence has surfaced to support these stories, and the true fate of the star remains one of the Smithsonian’s great unsolved mysteries.”

Preserving a national icon at the Smithsonian

After Appleton’s death in 1878, the flag passed to her son Eben Appleton , who lent it to Baltimore for that city’s 1880 sesquicentennial celebration. It remained in a safe deposit vault in New York City until 1907, when Eben lent it to the Smithsonian. Five years later, he made the gift permanent , saying he wanted the flag to belong “to that Institution in the country where it could be conveniently seen by the public and where it would be well cared for.”

When the flag arrived at the Smithsonian, it was smaller, just 30 by 34 feet, damaged from years of use at the fort and the removal of pieces as souvenirs. Recognizing the need for repairs, the Smithsonian hired Amelia Fowler , an embroidery teacher and well-known flag preserver, to replace the canvas backing that had been added in 1873. While working for the United States Naval Academy , Fowler had patented a method of supporting fragile flags with a linen backing that required a honeycomb pattern of stitches. With the help of ten needlewomen, Fowler spent eight weeks in 1914 restoring the flag, receiving $1,243 (around $39,000 today ) for the materials and work.

For the next 50 years, apart from a brief move during World War II, the Star-Spangled Banner was displayed in what is now the Arts and Industries Building . The glass case holding the flag wasn’t long enough to show the entire piece of fabric, so its lower half was folded up.

It was only in 1964 that the public was able to view the flag in its entirety. That year, the flag became the centerpiece of the new National Museum of History and Technology (now NMAH), which had ample space to allow the national treasure to hang freely. The Star-Spangled Banner remained in Flag Hall until 1998, when it taken down to undergo extensive conservation .

Started in 1996, the Star-Spangled Banner preservation project was planned with the help of historians, conservators, curators, engineers and organic scientists. Conservators began working on the flag in 1999, when construction of a conservation lab at the museum was completed. Over the next several years, they clipped 1.7 million stitches from the flag to remove the linen backing that had been added in 1914, lifted debris using dry cosmetic sponges and brushed the flag with an acetone-water mixture to remove soils embedded in fibers. Finally, they added a sheer polyester backing to help support the flag.

“Our goal was to extend [the flag’s] usable lifetime,” said Thomassen-Krauss. The intent was never to make the flag look as it did when it first flew over Fort McHenry. “We didn’t want to change any of the history written on the artifact by stains and soil,” the conservator added. “Those marks tell the flag’s story.”

While the conservators worked, the public looked on. By 2006, when NMAH closed for a two-year renovation , more than 12 million people had peered into the museum’s glass conservation lab to observe the process.

NMAH reopened in November 2008, with the Star-Spangled Banner now displayed in its own climate-controlled gallery. As Glass said ahead of the reopening, “The survival of this flag for nearly 200 years is a visible testimony to the strength and perseverance of this nation, and we hope that it will inspire many more generations to come.”

Reflecting on the Star-Spangled Banner’s significance, Kendrick said:

The Star-Spangled Banner resonates with people in different ways, for different reasons. It’s exciting to realize that you’re looking at the very same flag that Francis Scott Key saw on that September morning in 1814. But the Star-Spangled Banner is more than an artifact—it’s also a national symbol. It evokes powerful emotions and ideas about what it means to be an American.

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Cate Lineberry | READ MORE

Cate Lineberry was an associate web editor at Smithsonian magazine.

Meilan Solly | | READ MORE

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

UK election

British general election results

Keir Starmer will be Britain's next prime minister with his Labour Party winning a massive majority in a parliamentary election , with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the end of an historic thumping for his Conservative Party.

Historical results by party

As of 0600 GMT, centre-left Labour looked on course to beat an exit poll forecast of winning 410 of the 650 seats in parliament, an astonishing reversal of fortunes from five years ago when it suffered its worst performance since 1935.

The result would give Labour a majority of around 170 and would bring the curtain down on 14 years of increasingly tumultuous Conservative-led government.

Many of the biggest names in Conservative politics lost their seat, including former prime minister Liz Truss, whose disastrous spell in power during 2022 helped to pave the way for Labour’s victory on Friday.

The pro-Brexit lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg and former leadership contender Penny Mordaunt also lost. Sunak and his finance minister Jeremy Hunt retained their seats, the latter unexpectedly.

Sunak's party looks on track to undercut the exit poll forecast of 131 seats, the worst electoral performance in its history, as voters punished them for a cost-of-living crisis, and years of instability and in-fighting which has seen five different prime ministers since the Brexit vote of 2016.

UK Parliament House of Commons Library; Press Association

Jon McClure and Anand Katakam

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Paal Enger, Who Stole Munch’s ‘The Scream,’ Is Dead at 57

A promising player for a storied Norwegian soccer club, he instead found infamy for stealing one of the world’s most famous artworks.

By Alex Williams

Paal Enger, a rising prospect for a celebrated Norwegian soccer club who traded a game that he loved for another — art theft — that he absolutely relished, culminating in his infamous 1994 heist of Edvard Munch’s masterpiece “The Scream,” died on June 29 in Oslo. He was 57.

His death was confirmed by Nils Christian Nordhus, an Oslo-based lawyer who formerly represented Mr. Enger. He did not provide any more details.

Mr. Enger, who was born in Oslo on March 26, 1967, rose from the junior system of Vaalerenga, a five-time champion of Norway’s top-level league, now known as Eliteserien, and in 1985 made his debut with the club.

As a youth, he was a fan of the Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona . But his real hero, according to a 2021 profile in The Athletic, was Don Vito Corleone, the fictional crime boss played by Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.” He was so immersed in Mafia lore that when he was 15, he flew to New York to see for himself the locations where the Academy Award-winning “Godfather” films were shot.

By then, he was no stranger to the world of life outside the law. “I grew up in Tveita, on the east side of Oslo, and people there don’t have much money ,” he said in an interview last year with the British tabloid The Sun. “We started doing crime when we were very young and I found it exciting. I carried on because I enjoyed it very much.”

Graduating from boosting candy to cracking safes and blowing up automated teller machines with neighborhood friends, he proved a phenom in both athletics and crime.

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