Black.
I can honestly imagine someone spending their entire visit to London at the British Museum. I know I could.
The British Museum is recognized throughout the world for it's amazing collections, especially those from Ancient Greece and Egypt and the rise of western civilization. Over the years, these collections have brought controversy over how some of the amazing artifacts were brought to the museum in the first place, but that's a different story. The way I see it, I envision a future where nations who have the economic and cultural resources to sustainably maintain their respective artifacts should have a right to own them within their boundaries. For now, I think the British Museum is doing an excellent job of curating these amazing historical pieces. I just thought I would throw that out there.
Now let's talk about scale. And no, I don't mean that horrible number you see before you take a shower in the morning. I mean scale in terms of the collection of the museum as well as the size of artifacts.
Small roman coin Large Assyrian Statue
Size:
The museum contains an enormous collection of stone, granite, wood, and marble pieces that engulf entire floors, while also containing artifacts the size of a U.S. Dime. I'm not talking 10 feet tall either, I'm talking 2-3 story tall monuments. I mean take a look at some of this stuff:
Assyrian Palace Door Statue of Ramsses II
These are some of the examples that were showcased and presented in the free audio tour by Rick Steves. As a side note, I felt his tour was a bit on the short side, and perhaps missed some very interesting components of the museum. Rick did manage to keep me entertained with interesting facts and corny humor. There was much more to see in the museum of all different sizes beyond the tour. Pottery, coins, statues, mummies, and more statues, and even the Parthenon (not the real thing, but pretty close). I often found myself entering one room filled with trinkets, coins, and small statues, where a keen eye and focus were very important, only to move on to the next room to find a fully erect two-story greek structure. The amazing part was that this was only one small fraction of the museum. This actually takes me to my next point: Size...again.
Size...again:
I spent four hours over two days looking at the collection, and I felt I had only scratched the surface. Spanning the course of 8 rooms and over 5,000 years of history is a very difficult feat. This is especially true when the scale the museum varies from room to room and floor to floor. I could easily make my way through the Egyptian statues on the west wing in 20-30 minutes, but found myself lost in the mummy rooms for over one hour. There is just so much to see, and each artifact really does have a story.
Because of the aforementioned size of the museum, and for the sake of time, I found myself rushing through entire rooms. This included the North American and Asian collection, which, even though there are other museums stateside for these type of collections, still had some amazing pieces.
Aztec Goddessess
It goes without saying that I will be back at the museum for a third, or possibly a fourth time. I mean, how often can you say the British Museum is right down the block?
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