British Museum: free audio guide
The story of British Museum in London, as the Votura app tells it on location. Read it here, or hear it on the spot with turn-by-turn walking directions.
Before you go
- Address
- Great Russell St (btwn Montague & Bloomsbury St), London, Greater London, WC1B 3DG
- Opening hours
- Mon–Thu, Sat–Sun: 10:00 AM–5:30 PM; Fri: 10:00 AM–8:30 PM
The story
The British Museum in London is one of the world’s great encyclopedic museums, and it opens in 1753 when Sir Hans Sloane’s vast collection is left to the nation and the British Museum Act is passed under King George II. It first opens to the public in 1759 at Montagu House in Bloomsbury, becoming the first national public museum in the world and setting a model that many later museums follow. The institution’s famous Greek Revival main building, the one visitors see today on Great Russell Street, is designed by Sir Robert Smirke, with construction beginning in 1823 and the grand façade completed in 1852. Its monumental colonnade of 44 Ionic columns announces the scale of the collection inside, and the surrounding quadrangle becomes one of London’s most recognizable museum spaces. The museum’s dramatic circular Reading Room opens in 1857, designed by Sydney Smirke, and for more than a century it serves scholars such as Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and Mahatma Gandhi. The central domed structure of the Great Court, unveiled in 2000 and designed by Foster and Partners, transforms the old courtyard into the largest covered public square in Europe, with a glass roof of about 7,200 panels. That renovation also restores easy access to the Reading Room and gives the museum a new heart without erasing its 19th-century stone shell.
Inside, the British Museum holds more than 8 million objects, although only a fraction is on display at any one time, making it one of the most comprehensive collections on Earth. The Egyptian galleries draw huge attention for the Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799 near Rashid in Egypt and crucial to Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. The museum’s ancient Egyptian holdings also include the monumental bust of Ramesses II, often called “Young Memnon,” and a deep collection of mummies, coffins, and temple sculpture that spans millennia. The Parthenon sculptures, brought from Athens in the early 19th century under the authority of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, remain among its most debated treasures and one of the museum’s defining attractions. The museum also preserves the Sutton Hoo treasures, revealed in 1939 from an Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Suffolk, including the famous helmet associated with elite early medieval England. In the Enlightenment Gallery, opened in 2003, the museum presents the intellectual world of the 18th century through Sir Hans Sloane’s objects, scientific instruments, and curiosities that helped launch the collection.
The British Museum is not just about antiquity; it also tells the story of collecting itself, from imperial expansion to scholarship, conservation, and public access. Its collection includes the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs from Nineveh, the Lewis Chessmen from 12th-century Scotland, the Portland Vase, Chinese ceramics, Islamic manuscripts, Benin bronzes, and one of the world’s finest collections of prints and drawings. The museum’s legal and ethical history is part of its identity too, because it has repeatedly been at the center of international debates over provenance, ownership, and restitution. Visitors come for the treasures, but they also come for the sheer concentration of human history gathered in one place, from the ancient Mediterranean to East Asia and the Americas. Even the building itself becomes part of the exhibit, with Smirke’s stone colonnades, Foster’s glass roof, and the old Reading Room forming a layered monument to 270 years of collecting. For travelers in London, the British Museum offers a rare chance to stand face-to-face with objects that have shaped archaeology, art history, and public museums across the world.
Written for the Votura audio tour and read aloud in the app. Opening hours change, so check with the venue before you go.
Self-guided tours that stop at British Museum
- Museums of Marvel: A Walking Tour of London's Cultural Gems
- London's Cultural Treasures: A Stroll Through the Best Museums
- London's Time Capsule: A 2-Day Car Tour of Historical Museums
- London’s Distinctive Districts: A Walk Through the City’s Contrasts
- Free London: Parks, Squares & Iconic Views Walk
- London's Historic Heartbeat: An 8-Hour Walking Tour of Iconic Buildings and Museums
Hear it on the spot
Votura plays this guide when you reach British Museum, then walks you to the next stop. Works offline.