The British Museum

                                                                                                                                                                                             The British Museum is a museun in London dedicated to human history and culture. Its permanent collection, numbering some eight million works, is amongst the largest and most comprehensive in existence and originates from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.

The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. The British Museum was unique in that it housed both a national museum of antiquities and a national library in the same building.

Since 2002 the director of the museum has been Neil MacGregor.