The British Museum was established in 1753 as as an encyclopedia of nature and of art. It was the first museum of its kind that did not belong to the King or the church but was open to every one. It had the aim of collecting everything.

Highlights of the Museum's collections include the Elgin Marbles - carvings from the Athenian Parthenon in Rome, a huge collection of Egyptian artifacts including mummies and the Rosetta Stone that was key to the deciphering hieroglyphics, and an Easter Island stone head.

The Queen opened the Museum's Great Court in 2000. The two-acre square, enclosed by a spectacular glass roof, transformed the Museum's inner courtyard, with the world-famous Reading Room at its centre, into the largest covered public square in Europe.
Designed by Foster and Partners, the project cost £100 million. The courtyard was one of the lost spaces of London, hidden from public view since 1857.

The Great Court increased public space in the Museum by forty per cent, allowing visitors to move freely around the main floor for the first time in 150 years. There is direct access west into the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, east into the King's Library and north into the Wellcome Trust Gallery. Inside the courtyard, two monumental staircases encircle the outside of the Reading Room and lead to the Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery, and the Court Restaurant. From the restaurant level a bridge link takes visitors into the upper galleries of the Museum.

The notorious Cupboard 55, known as the "Secretum", conceals the scandalous legacy of George Witt, a Victorian collector of phalluses. For 135 years, access was limited to gentlemen of "taste and education". Even today the collection is not open to the public and in order to view the assortment of suggestive objects made from stone, wax, amber, bronze and glass, some with wings, written permission is required.

The roots of the Museum lie in the impressive collection of the scientist and physician Sir Hans Sloane who acquired around 71,000 objects, 40,000 printed books, and 7000 manuscripts over his lifetime. Sloane did not want to see his collection broken up after his death and so he left it for the nation. As the collection grew the museum split into two other branch institutions. Today the collection at the British Museum has over 13 million objects with 70 million at the Museum of Natural History and 150 million at the British Library. The British Museum covers an area of 75,000 square metres and has about 50,000 items on display at any one time in 100 galleries.

The British Museum houses priceless artifacts from all over the world and there is some controversy as to whether the Museum has the right to keep some of these. The Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes are among the most disputed objects in its collections, and organisations have been formed demanding the return of both sets of artifacts to their native countries of Greece and Nigeria. The British Museum continues to assert that it is an appropriate custodian and has a right to its disputed artefacts under British law.