The British Museum is one of the largest and most important museums in the world. It was founded in 1753 by Sir Hans Sloane, a physician and scientist. It was the first public national museum in the world. It is in Great Russell Street, in the Bloosbury area of London. The Museum is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of eight million works, collected during the era of the British Empire, is among the the largest and most comprehensive in the world. It documents the history of human culture from its beginning to the present. The British Museum houses the world's largest collection of Egyptian antiquities (with over 100,000 pieces) outside the Egyptan Museum in Cairo. It includes: the Rosetta Stone, a collection of 140 mummies and coffins, important sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens and The Elgin Marbles. The British Museum also possesses the world's largest and most significant collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq: Assyrian sculptures and Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities, including the “Standard of Ur”. Besides, there are drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Durer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Turner. You don’t have to buy tickets because its entrance is free.

BEATRICE NEGRO