British Museum.. but where are the British things? (British Museum)

Member Name: forsaken

Product:	British Museum
Date:	12/01/04 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, Lots of Greek, Roman and Epytian displays

Disadvantages: Not very modern way of presenting the information, Will bore children easily

Personally I think the term British Museum is a little misleading due to what it actually has inside. This being said, there is no doubt that it is a world class museum and houses some of the most important histoircal finds, many of them dating back over 2000 years.

To start with the location, its pretty central, Tottenham Court Road tube station is only a 5minute walk from the entrance so it is really easy to get to. However, I have to say finding it isn't as easy as you would think, its on your left, but the signposting is fairly poor and you aren't sure its there until you are right in front of it.

The museum itself is totally free, however they rely on visitors making donations, and lots of tourists do give generously from what I saw. If you want to buy maps, guidebooks ect, then I would suggest you give the first desk a miss and go inside into the greenhouse area and there is a second desk there.

The museum is based around a huge classical building, but recently they have enclosed the whole thing with glass so that you don't get wet even on a rainy day (which is useful). In this main plaza is another information desk, the gift shop, toilets and then entrance to all the different parts of the building.

What the British Museum is renound for it its huge collection of Roman and Greek artifacts which was what we spent the whole day in. There are a few disadvantages, there are lots of stairs which makes it a pretty hard place to take young children or those that have problems in walking long distances, and the whole museum is boiling because of the greenhouse style entrance.

There are what seems like hundreds of rooms on Greek and Roman culture. I was personally amazed on how vast it all seemed. However, I did feel that the whole set up was a little random and wasn't very logically organised. However in such a huge building and with little space to manouver all the artifacts it must be hard to arrange
everything to all peoples taste.

There are also some smaller interesting things, I loved the section on the history of money, this is a small exhibition, but guided me all the way through how currency works, and there are huge ammounts of ancient foreign currency on display.

The Egyptian exhihitions are all over the first floor, all the big items such as the stone tombs and the like are all as your enter the wing. It is all very interesting, but it is crowded and noisy. The other interesting thing for me were the actual mummies which are on the first floor, these were really well explained and there are huge ammounts on display.

There are also lots of Greek building in the new part of the museum, they include lots of interactive displays which really bring the history alive and is probably the most suitable for young children but are informative enough for adults.

This really isn't a museum that is designed for children, I couldn't as a young person spend all day in the museum. However, I do think that it would be missing if you didn't come in, as its free you could just spend an hour or two there. All in all its a good day for everyone.

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