The British Museum, London
Nihan Uğurlu · Keyfi Yazılarım ·
Travel memories from 2015. Hours and prices may change; check official links before visiting.
Personal travel notes, discoveries along the way and photographs from the original story.
The British Museum
This is London's most famous museum. It was founded in 1753 with Sir Hans Sloane's donation of a collection of 71,000 objects. It has remained popular ever since. As the collection grew, the original building was no longer big enough, so additional buildings were planned.
Entry was free, or you could give a voluntary donation: whatever you felt like 🙂 In my eyes, this was a museum of plunder, full of things taken from elsewhere. Why should we pay for that as well? There were Ottoman works, too; I vaguely remembered hearing they might be returned, though I wasn't convinced. Millions of objects from different civilisations around the world had been brought together and displayed. My reaction at the time was that it was all stolen! I had even heard British people describe it as a museum of plunder 🙂
You really need to set aside plenty of time: perhaps four or five hours, possibly more. We went round rather quickly. Since we wouldn't understand everything, we tried to focus on what interested us most. Naturally, that meant the mummies. They were fascinating and genuinely eerie.
Even that much walking tired us out. The British Museum is beautiful, both architecturally and visually, and enormous. There are places to rest and eat, plus several shops if you want souvenirs. My notes placed the restaurant and souvenir shops on the first floor.
The museum has sections devoted to many different parts of the world. Egypt is one of the most striking collections, alongside Africa, Oceania, the Americas, Sudan, Asia, Greece, Rome, Europe and others. Objects range from everyday items to antiquities. My notes recommended the 'Antique Turkey' section for objects connected with Turkey, including embroidery and İznik tiles. At one point we were exhausted and sat down for a break. Our phones were running out of battery, so when we spotted a socket, we decided to charge them. A security guard came over and said that this was illegal: how would we like a £1,000 fine? He called it theft 🙂 I was astonished! A British Museum employee was lecturing us about theft for charging a phone—in this museum! I found that ironic and very strange. What about everything taken to fill the museum? If you need to tell someone not to do something, surely there is a polite way to do it. I also noted that a preserved pharaoh's body was on display, but we didn't see it. We were too tired to keep searching, so we left that for another time 🙂