The British Museum in London is one of the largest museums in the world, with a collection of about eight million pieces including finds, works of art and books. Its history is very old: it was founded by the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, and on his death his collection passed to the British state. The collection of the British Museum then grew over time, above all thanks to the 19th-century excavations in the countries colonised by the United Kingdom.
Today the British Museum holds collections from every continent, from the galleries with works from the Americas to finds from Australia, passing of course through Europe and Asia. The museum has, in fact, a very ambitious goal: to gather under one roof the evidence of every civilisation in the world.
Would you like to know more?
Discover the thirteen works of the British Museum you absolutely can’t miss.
Let’s go!
1 – The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone was one of the most important discoveries in history, and it is right here, inside the British Museum. It isn’t particularly beautiful to look at, yet historically it was crucial, at least for Egyptologists.
It was found in 1799 and, until then, hieroglyphs were just mysterious symbols placed side by side. Thanks to this stone, that cryptic language of ancient Egypt could finally be deciphered.
How was it possible?
Very simply, the Rosetta Stone is nothing more than a slab of stone carved with the same text in three different scripts: ancient Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphs. It is a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC in honour of the pharaoh Ptolemy V. Since scholars could read Greek, they could finally work back to the meaning of the hieroglyphs by comparing the three versions.
But who actually cracked it?
After the first steps taken by the Englishman Thomas Young, it was the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion who first deciphered the hieroglyphic system, in 1822. From that moment, ancient Egypt could finally “speak” again.
Thank you, Rosetta Stone!
A curiosity!
While it was the French who found the stone during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, it was the British who took possession of it after defeating France in Egypt. That’s why today it is at the British Museum and not at the Louvre in Paris.
2 – The Flood Tablet and the Epic of Gilgamesh
If the Rosetta Stone gave ancient Egypt its voice back, this little clay tablet gave us back one of the oldest stories in the world.
The Flood Tablet is a fragment carved in cuneiform script, coming from the great library of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (7th century BC). It is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest literary texts ever to reach us.
What does it tell?
On this tablet is the story of a man warned by the gods of a coming universal flood: he builds a great boat and saves his family and the animals aboard it. Does it remind you of something? Exactly: it is a story strikingly similar to the biblical one of Noah, but it precedes it by centuries.
Here’s the best part!
In 1872 the scholar George Smith, a self-taught enthusiast at the British Museum, managed to decipher this passage. It is said that, reading the flood account for the first time, he was so overwhelmed with emotion that he started running around the room. His discovery caused a sensation across Europe, because it revealed how deep the roots of stories we thought unique really were.
3 – The Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum
Monumental and beautiful, these are the sculptural groups that once decorated the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. They were brought to England at the start of the 19th century, and to this day Greece asks for their return.
How did they get here?
It was Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which then ruled Greece), who had them removed from the Parthenon and shipped to London between 1801 and 1805. The British Museum bought them in 1816, which is why they are also known as the “Elgin Marbles”.
These sculptures were made around 440 BC under the direction of Phidias, one of the greatest artists of antiquity. Today they are all white, but you should know that they were once fully painted and must have looked truly alive, just like the statues that decorated Roman cities!
What do they show?
The long frieze depicts the Panathenaic procession, the great festival in honour of the goddess Athena, with horsemen, animals for the sacrifice and offerings. The Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum are especially important because they mark the peak of classical art and the extraordinary skill reached by Greek sculptors.
They really stayed with me; what do you think?
I’ll also point out that in the same room you’ll find the Parthenon metopes, splendid as well.
4 – The Ancient Egypt section
The collection of Egyptian finds at the British Museum is the third largest in the world. The first is of course that of Cairo, followed by the beautiful Egyptian Museum of Turin.
There are countless mummies, colossal statues and tiny objects of everyday life, great painted panels and entire walls of hieroglyphs, as well as the precious papyri of the Book of the Dead, the illustrated guide that accompanied the deceased into the afterlife.
A work you can’t miss!
Among them all, look for the colossal bust of Ramesses II, known as the “Younger Memnon”, brought to London from the pharaoh’s mortuary temple at Thebes. It is said that this very sculpture inspired the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to write the famous poem Ozymandias (1818), a reflection on the vanity of power: of the great empires, in the end, nothing remains but a few ruins in the desert.
In short, a section where it’s worth getting lost for hours and hours.
5 – The Assyrian rooms: the lion hunt and the lamassu
For me they are among the most impressive rooms in the whole museum, and yet they are often overlooked. Here are kept the reliefs from the palaces of the ancient Assyrian kings, at Nimrud and Nineveh (in present-day northern Iraq), dating from between the 9th and the 7th century BC.
What will you see?
Welcoming you are the lamassu, colossal winged bulls (and lions) with a human head and a long curly beard. They were protective deities, placed to guard the palace gates and keep evil away. Look at them from the side and then from the front: they have five legs, so they appear standing still when seen head-on and walking when seen in profile.
But the real masterpiece is another.
In the room of the lion hunt of Ashurbanipal you’ll find a long sequence of alabaster reliefs (about 645 BC) that many consider the absolute summit of Assyrian art. The king is shown hunting lions during a ceremony. What strikes you most, though, is not the power of the sovereign, but the heartbreaking pity with which the wounded and dying lions are carved: animals rendered with a realism and an emotion that, even today, leave you speechless.
6 – The Lewis Chessmen, a Viking mystery?
These are numerous chess pieces in walrus ivory and whale bone, found on the Isle of Lewis, in the Scottish Hebrides, in 1831. They date to the 12th century and were probably made in Norway, likely at Trondheim. Ninety-three pieces survive.
The craftsmanship is truly incredible: each piece has a different expression, and some of the rooks depict berserker warriors who, seized by battle frenzy, bite their own shields.
A curiosity that will make you smile!
If they look familiar, it’s because these chessmen inspired the famous wizard-chess game in the first Harry Potter film.
What still hasn’t been explained, though, is how and why they ended up on the coasts of Scotland. A real mystery.
7 – The Sutton Hoo treasure
This treasure was found in 1939 in Suffolk, England, and is one of the most important pieces of evidence of 6th-7th century art in this area.
Archaeologists brought to light an exceptional burial: an entire oak ship, almost 27 metres long, which held the body of a powerful Anglo-Saxon king, probably Rædwald, king of East Anglia.
Would you like to know which is the most famous piece?
Without a doubt the Sutton Hoo helmet, with its unmistakable face mask: it has become a true icon of Anglo-Saxon England. But in the tomb there were also gold buckles and clasps, sword fittings, drinking horns and many other splendid objects worth admiring.
A detail you may not know: the story of this discovery is told in the film The Dig (2021).
8 – The Mildenhall dish
This dish is one of the finest examples of art from late Roman antiquity. It is a genuine masterpiece of silverwork: it weighs more than 8 kg, is in embossed silver and shows Bacchic scenes around the bearded face of Oceanus, the god of the sea, placed at the centre.
The Mildenhall dish of the British Museum is simply magnificent.
The rest of the silverware deserves to be admired too: it is what remains of the treasures hidden at the time of the barbarian invasions and found again, centuries later, in the most unlikely circumstances.
9 – The Portland Vase
If you love glass, this is the piece that will leave you speechless. The Portland Vase is the most famous Roman cameo glass to reach us (1st century AD): a vase of deep blue glass on which delicate white figures tell a mythological scene still debated by scholars today.
But its story is as adventurous as its beauty.
In 1845 a visitor, reportedly drunk, hurled an object at the case and smashed the vase to pieces. It was then patiently reassembled fragment by fragment and, if you look at it today, you’d hardly notice what it went through.
A detail you may not know: its elegance so fascinated Josiah Wedgwood that the famous ceramicist reproduced it in his renowned porcelain, turning it into an icon of neoclassical taste.
10 – The Lothair Crystal
This is a jewel probably made for the Carolingian king Lothair II (around 860 AD). The Lothair Crystal, a disc of pure rock crystal, was minutely engraved with the biblical scenes of Susanna and the Elders: the story of a woman unjustly accused and then cleared, a true celebration of justice. It’s no coincidence that the object is thought to have had a use connected to the administration of justice.
You’ll find it in the medieval section of the British Museum.
11 – The Moai of the British Museum
You know those ancient monolithic sculptures of dark stone, with the large face and the pronounced nose, that stand on Easter Island? Well, there’s one at the British Museum too, in the “Living and Dying” section, and it’s called Hoa Hakananai’a. It is almost 3 metres tall and dates roughly to 1200.
Its name means something like “lost friend” (or “stolen”), and that’s no accident: it was taken from Rapa Nui in 1868 by the crew of the British ship HMS Topaze and given to Queen Victoria, who in turn gave it to the museum. Today the community of Rapa Nui asks for its return home.
A detail you may not know: on the back of the statue are carved images linked to the birdman cult (tangata manu), the religion that spread on the island after the age of the great moai.
I don’t know the art of this part of the world deeply, but I promise you this sculpture has a remarkable expressive power and is truly impressive. One word to describe it: majestic.
Here’s a very Italian curiosity too: a second moai stands in the village of Vitorchiano, near Viterbo, a gift from the people of Rapa Nui. You can see it for free, because it’s displayed on the outer belvedere of the town.
12 – Greek and Etruscan pottery
Standing in front of certain masterpieces is undoubtedly very moving, but what I love most about museums is when they tell me what everyday life was like for the people of the past. What they did, what they ate, how women did their make-up, what children played with, what their clothes were like.
This is what I like to know.
The “shards” of Greek and Roman vases, jugs and flasks are scattered across all the museums of Europe and always seem the same, and yet they are a discovery every time. The most beautiful one at the British Museum, in my opinion, is the amphora depicting Achilles and Penthesilea, my heroine. It is a masterpiece attributed to the potter Exekias: it shows the exact moment when Achilles strikes the queen of the Amazons a mortal blow and, as the story goes, their eyes meet just as he falls hopelessly in love with her. A shame you can’t photograph it decently from any angle.
13 – The Great Court of the British Museum
Don’t forget to admire the architecture of the Great Court of the British Museum. It is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II and is the largest covered square in Europe: full of light, truly magnificent. It was inaugurated in 2000 to a design by Norman Foster, and its spectacular glass-and-steel roof is made of 3,312 panes, each a different shape.
A detail you may not know!
At the centre of the Great Court is the historic Reading Room, the museum’s old circular reading room. Among those shelves studied figures of the calibre of Karl Marx (who wrote Das Kapital there), Gandhi, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde. Pause for a moment to picture them there, bent over their books.
Practical information and thoughts
Like the other English state museums, the British Museum is free, but a donation on the way out is appreciated (and only right, I’d add).
The last time I visited it was in 2014 and it was a huge thrill to see certain works again after studying them. I also discovered many others and spent hours admiring some masterpieces of the minor arts: jewellery, plates, weapons and clothing.
I was also very struck by some works from Asia and Africa, sections that are too often overlooked and that instead deserve all your time.
One last tip!
If you love the great encyclopedic museums, after the British Museum I recommend carrying on with the works of the Vatican Museums or those of the Galleria Borghese. Enjoy your visit!
