British Museum: Fifteenth Must-See Destination On Lonely Planet’s Bucket List

British Museum:

The British Museum in London has made it onto the top 20 must-see global sites, alongside world heritage sites like the Taj Mahal and Cambodia’s Temples of Angkor.

The travel website Lonely Planet places the institution at 15th  behind Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and other important places of outstanding beauty . Another 34 UK entries made it onto the world’s 500 “most amazing sights” which was rated by travel experts and authors they including the Lake District, Snowdonia and Edinburgh Castle.

The Museum was founded in 1753, to display a remarkable collection which spans over two million years of human history. Culturally significant objects such as the Rosetta Stone, Parthenon sculptures, and Egyptian mummies are visited by up to six million visitors per year. In addition to the vast permanent collection, the museum’s special exhibitions, displays and events are all designed to advance understanding of the collection and cultures they represent. The British Museum was established 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. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensingtonin 1881. 

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