British Museum

On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of…

The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke, with 43 columns in the Ionic order 45 ft high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor. The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting The Progress of Civilisation, consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852. The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (King's Library) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. Work was also progressing on the northern half of…

Thefts from the museum include: several historic coins and medals in the 1970s; In July 2002 a marble head, valued at £50,000, was stolen from the Archaic Greek gallery. In 2004, 15 Chinese artefacts including jewels, ornate hairpins and fingernail guards were stolen. In 2017, it was revealed that a Cartier diamond had been missing since 2011. Some of the missing artefacts were later found to have been sold on eBay for considerably less than their estimated value. The museum had been warned of the thefts as early as 2021. The museum's director, Hartwig Fischer, resigned because of the museum's inadequate response to the warnings of theft. The number of artefacts stolen was estimated to be…