Artifacts & Treasures at The British Museum

After our awesome breakfast, we headed over to the British Museum. According to Google Maps, it was just under a mile walk. The morning was cold and brisk, but the sun broke through the clouds and warmed us during the walk. We arrived at the British Museum around 11:30 a.m., checked our coats and then walked into to an area newly developed in 2000 called The Great Court. It was huge and beautiful and astounding. This wide angle shot is a much better picture than I was able to get with my zoom lens.

We stopped and picked up audio guides to hear more about the exhibits and pieces highlighted therein. The British Museum was founded in 1753 and is the oldest, national, public and secular museum in the world. Here is some information from my copy of The British Museum Visitor’s Guide:

“The British Museum is one of the world’s most visited museums and covers an astonishing range of cultures, periods and types of material. The Museum today reflects many moments of its past history…The original universal ambition of the museum to embrace all knowledge in the arts and sciences is depicted on the pediment above the main entrance.”

Here is a map of the Museum. This museum is huge and despite what any travel guide book says, you will need at least 6 hours or two days really see all of the displayed collection, especially if you are like us and enjoy reading the information plaques and taking your time. Brooke and I decided we would focus on the areas and timeframes that are most unique and famous at The British Museum. We chose ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Near East and the few selected artifacts from earliest civilizations found in Britain. We skipped the Africa, Asia and North America sections.

It was amazing to see items so marvelously crafted from thousands of years ago. The art and artifacts are presented in a manner that lets you examine them very closely. I highly recommend visiting this museum.

I took a lot of photos at the museum and have detailed our journey through the treasures on my photo site due to the quantity of pics, (please click my SmugMug Gallery image below) you will get the photo page in a new window.  There you can see my pictures in exquisite detail and for each picture shown I have provided a link to the incredible museum webpage that discusses the history and information about each artifact.

Alternately, you can just go straight to a slideshow -- but there are no cool information links (but it is very pretty).  For those who can’t get to London any time soon, I hope that the pictures and links I have provided give you the next best thing. :-)

We both really enjoyed ourselves at the Museum and would go there again on another trip to view the items we didn’t get a chance to see.  We left the museum around 6:45 p.m. and walked just down the road to my next special birthday treat…A SHAKESPEARE PLAY.