---
node: spot_london_british_museum
type: spot
slug: british_museum
destination: dest_london
title: "British Museum"
lead: "The British Museum holds eight million objects from every inhabited part of the world and charges nothing to see them. It is too large to do in a day, so choose a few galleries and accept the rest."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_london_british_museum.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Brit%C3%A1nico,_Londres,_Inglaterra,_2022-11-26,_DD_45.jpg"
image_author: "Diego Delso"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

It opened in 1759 as the first national public museum anywhere, on the principle that the collection belonged to the public rather than the crown, and it has been free ever since. The famous rooms are the Egyptian sculpture gallery with the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, the Assyrian reliefs from Nineveh and the Sutton Hoo ship burial. How several of these came to London is contested, in some cases formally by the governments that want them back, and the museum's labels now say more about that than they used to.

## Highlights

Enter by the Montague Place door at the back: the main entrance queue is long and this one rarely is. The Great Court is a covered square, not a gallery, so do not spend your time there. Two hours on two collections beats six hours on everything.