page_title: British Museum
section_title: Department of Greece and Rome
hierarchical_section_title: British Museum / Departments / Department of Greece and Rome
context_page_description: The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.
  The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Its expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881.
  In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997.
context_section_description: The British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200 BC) to the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the Edict of Milan under the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 313 AD. Archaeology was in its infancy during the nineteenth century and many pioneering individuals began excavating sites across the Classical world, chief among them for the museum were Charles Newton, John Turtle Wood, Robert Murdoch Smith and Charles Fellows.
  The Greek objects originate from across the Ancient Greek world, from the mainland of Greece and the Aegean Islands, to neighbouring lands in Asia Minor and Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean and as far as the western lands of Magna Graecia that include Sicily and southern Italy. The Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures are represented, and the Greek collection includes important sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as elements of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos.
  Beginning from the early Bronze Age, the department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities outside Italy, as well as extensive groups of material from Cyprus and non-Greek colonies in Lycia and Caria on Asia Minor. There is some material from the Roman Republic, but the collection's strength is in its comprehensive array of objects from across the Roman Empire, with the exception of Britain (which is the mainstay of the Department of Prehistory and Europe).
  The collections of ancient jewellery and bronzes, Greek vases (many from graves in southern Italy that were once part of Sir William Hamilton's and Chevalier Durand's collections), Roman glass including the famous Cameo glass Portland Vase, Roman mosaics from Carthage and Utica in North Africa that were excavated by Nathan Davis, and silver hoards from Roman Gaul (some of which were bequeathed by the philanthropist and museum trustee Richard Payne Knight), are particularly important. Cypriot antiquities are strong too and have benefited from the purchase of Sir Robert Hamilton Lang's collection as well as the bequest of Emma Turner in 1892, which funded many excavations on the island. Roman sculptures (many of which are copies of Greek originals) are particularly well represented by the Townley collection as well as residual sculptures from the famous Farnese collection.
  Objects from the Department of Greece and Rome are located throughout the museum, although many of the architectural monuments are to be found on the ground floor, with connecting galleries from Gallery 5 to Gallery 23. On the upper floor, there are galleries devoted to smaller material from ancient Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the Roman Empire.
  Key highlights of the collections include:
  Parthenon
  The Parthenon Marbles (Elgin Marbles), (447–438 BC)
  Erechtheion
  A surviving column, (420–415 BC)
  One of six remaining Caryatids, (415 BC)
  Temple of Athena Nike
  Surviving frieze slabs, (427–424 BC)
  Temple of Bassae
  Twenty-three surviving blocks of the frieze from the interior of the temple, (420–400 BC)
  Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
  Two colossal free-standing figures identified as Maussollos and his wife Artemisia, (c. 350 BC)
  Part of an impressive horse from the chariot group adorning the summit of the Mausoleum, (c. 350 BC)
  The Amazonomachy frieze – A long section of relief frieze showing the battle between Greeks and Amazons, (c. 350 BC)
  Temple of Artemis in Ephesus
  One of the sculptured column bases, (340–320 BC)
  Part of the Ionic frieze situated above the colonnade, (330–300 BC)
  Knidos in Asia Minor
  Demeter of Knidos, (350 BC)
  Lion of Knidos, (350–200 BC)
  Xanthos in Asia Minor
  Lion Tomb, (550–500 BC)
  Harpy Tomb, (480–470 BC)
  Nereid Monument, partial reconstruction of a large and elaborate Lykian tomb, (390–380 BC)
  Tomb of Merehi, (390–350 BC)
  Tomb of Payava, 
caption: Room 18 – Parthenon marbles from the Acropolis of Athens, 447 BC
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