|Location||Great Russell Street, London WC1, England, UK|
|Collection size||approx. 8 million objects| |Public transit
access||Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Russell Square, Goodge
Street| The British Museum is a museum in London dedicated to
human history and culture. Its permanent collection, numbering
some eight million works, is among the largest and most
comprehensive in existence and originates from all continents,
illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its
beginnings to the present.[a] The British Museum was established
in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and
scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public
on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site
of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following
two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding
British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of
several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum
(Natural History) in Sou