British Museum

What it is

The British Museum in Bloomsbury holds the largest permanent museum collection in the world and charges nothing to see it. Roughly eight million artefacts are in its care, of which about fifty thousand — under one per cent — are on public display at any one time. That ratio is the single most useful fact a first-time visitor can hold: what is on the floor is already a severe selection, and no visit sees the collection. The Museum was established by an act of Parliament to which King George II gave royal assent on 7 June 1753, and its first exhibition galleries and reading room opened to scholars on 15 January 1759, which makes it the oldest national public museum in the world. The building a visitor walks into is not that first one. Sir Robert Smirke's Greek Revival quadrangle went up wing by wing between 1823 and 1847, and the courtyard it enclosed was roofed over by Foster and Partners and reopened in December 2000 as the Great Court, the largest covered square in Europe. The Museum is arranged by region rather than by chronology, so a route through it is a route across the map.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The Museum is organised by region and period across two main floors and a mezzanine, and the Great Court is the hub every route passes through. Its opening hours are deliberately wider than the galleries' — 10.00 to 17.30, and to 20.30 on Fridays — so the covered square stays usable after the collections start clearing. The Museum warns that staff begin clearing galleries ten minutes before they close, which is a real ten minutes off the end of a visit rather than a formality. Beyond the galleries, the Museum publishes opening times for each service separately, and they do not all match: the Box Office runs 10.00 to 16.50 Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays, the Guide Desk and Ticket Desk to 16.30, the Information Desk to 17.00, and the cloakroom takes its last deposit one hour before closing. The Families Desk and the Ford Centre for Young Visitors open 10.00 to 12.30 and 13.15 to 16.30, and only at weekends and during Camden school holidays. Two entrances serve the site: the Main entrance on Great Russell Street and a second on Montague Place.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow three hours. The British Museum publishes no suggested visit length of its own, so three hours is this guide's judgement rather than a figure read off the Museum's site, and it is built from figures the Museum does publish. The galleries run 10.00 to 17.00, staff begin clearing them ten minutes before that, and last entry is 16.45 — so the longest weekday visit physically available is under seven hours, and nobody should attempt it. Against about fifty thousand objects on display, three hours buys two or three regional departments walked properly rather than the whole building walked badly. A visitor with only ninety minutes should pick one department and accept that choice rather than sample four. A visitor with a Friday has the most generous option in the week: the Museum closes at 20.30 that day with last entry at 20.15, which adds three and a half hours to the available window and moves the crowd out of the way at the same time.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Season and crowds

Friday is the structurally different day. The Museum opens daily at 10.00 and closes at 17.00, except on Fridays when it closes at 20.30 with last entry at 20.15 — the only late opening in the week, and the only way to see the galleries after dark in winter. The Great Court stays open to 17.30 on other days and to 20.30 on Fridays. The Museum is closed on 24, 25 and 26 December, the only annual closure it publishes. Gallery closures are a separate and more frequent hazard: the Museum maintains a published list of planned closures for maintenance, refurbishment and private events, and at the time of writing it named the Reading Room as temporarily closed on 27 August 2026 between 10.00 and 13.00, with named galleries partially closed for stretches in late September and October 2026 and again in February and March 2027. It also states that galleries may close at short notice for safety reasons without advance warning.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Entry to the permanent collection is free. The Museum's own words are "Tickets to the permanent collection are free" and "Free entry"; a free timed ticket can be booked in advance, up to nine people per booking, and arrives by email. Booking is recommended rather than required. The Museum states that entry without a pre-booked ticket depends on capacity, that queues for non-ticket holders are to be expected at busier times, and that walk-up visits are available each day regardless. Ticket holders are asked to arrive at their entry time and not before it. Temporary exhibitions are charged separately and are booked on their own; an exhibition ticket also admits the holder to the permanent collection. The Museum publishes no adult admission price for the permanent collection because there is none. The cloakroom is charged per item: bags of 4 to 8kg £6, bags up to 4kg £4, coats £3, umbrellas £2, and fold-up pushchairs free, with Members exempt.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The Museum is at Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG, with a second entrance on Montague Place, London WC1E 7JW. The Museum names four tube stations as the closest and gives its own walking times: Tottenham Court Road five minutes, Holborn seven minutes, Russell Square seven minutes and Goodge Street eight minutes. Because four lines' worth of stations sit within eight minutes, the British Museum is one of the easier major London sites to reach off-peak on foot from wherever a visitor happens to be in the centre. Buses stop on three surrounding streets: New Oxford Street takes routes 1, 8, 19, 25, 38, 55, 98 and 242; Tottenham Court Road northbound and Gower Street southbound take 14, 24, 29, 73, 134 and 390; Southampton Row takes 59, 68, X68, 91, 168 and 188. Bicycle racks sit inside the gates of the Main Entrance, though folding bikes are not allowed onto the premises and the Museum accepts no responsibility for bikes left there.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The luggage rule catches travellers arriving between trains. Wheeled cases, sports equipment and large items of luggage are not allowed on British Museum premises at all — not into the cloakroom, not into the grounds — and the Museum's advice is to use the storage at major rail stations including Euston, King's Cross and Charing Cross instead. Every visitor passes a security check and bag search before entering, and all bags, rucksacks and packages may be searched. Offensive weapons, dangerous chemicals and other suspicious items are confiscated before entry and returned on the way out where there is no legal barrier. The second trap is the gallery closure list rather than the front door: a visitor who has come for one specific room should check the Museum's published planned closures first, because a named gallery can be shut for weeks. The third is timing — arriving early for a booked slot does not get anyone in early, and the Museum asks visitors not to do it, because it lengthens the security queue for everyone.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Hand-held photography and video recording are allowed in most galleries for private purposes, and flash is explicitly permitted — an unusually relaxed rule for a collection of this age, and one that separates the British Museum from most of the London sites around it. Restrictions are signposted where they apply, so the rule to follow is the sign on the case rather than a memory of the general policy. Tripods, monopods and selfie sticks may not be used anywhere inside the building; a permit can be issued in special circumstances on application to the Museum. Commercial filming is not allowed during public opening hours. In practice the Great Court is the picture: Foster and Partners' glass-and-steel lattice roof over Smirke's stone courtyard, best from the upper level of the staircase that wraps the old Reading Room, and best again on a Friday evening when the galleries have emptied but the court is still lit and open until 20.30.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

• 45 min

  6 min walk · London Borough of Camden

  Charles Laughton

  • Historic monument
• 45 min

  6 min walk · London Borough of Camden

  Christina Rossetti

  • Historic monument
• 45 min

  9 min walk · London Borough of Camden

  William Reeve

  • Historic monument

External links

• Official site
• +44 20 7323 8299
• View on Wikidata