British Museum

The British Museum became the world's first national public museum when Parliament established it in 1753. Physician Sir Hans Sloane had spent a lifetime collecting over 71,000 objects, from natural history specimens to coins and manuscripts. His will offered the collection to the nation for 20,000 pounds, far below its value, and Parliament raised the funds through a national lottery. The Cottonian and Harleian libraries joined Sloane's collection to form the foundation of what would become both the British Museum and, eventually, the British Library.

The museum opened at Montagu House in Bloomsbury in 1759 and has grown to hold roughly eight million objects spanning two million years of human history. Leonardo da Vinci's studies, Michelangelo's sketches for the Battle of Cascina, and Pieter Bruegel's drawings represent the prints and drawings collection. William Blake's visionary works, including The Ancient of Days, show British artistic genius.

Ancient civilizations fill most of the ground floor. The Horse of Selene and the rest of the Parthenon sculptures sit in Gallery 18, while the Dying Lion reliefs from Nineveh show Assyrian carving at its most expressive. The Cyrus Cylinder, sometimes called the first charter of human rights, records a Persian king's decree from the 6th century BC. The famous Round Reading Room served scholars including Karl Marx and Virginia Woolf before the British Library moved out. Norman Foster's Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, opened in 2000, created Europe's largest covered public square. Admission is free.