Bedford College, London

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is a scholarly centre in London devoted to supporting original research into the history of British Art. It was founded in 1970 and endowed by a gift from Paul Mellon. Since 1996, it has been situated at 16 Bedford Square in a Grade I listed building. This building houses an outstanding library of 26,000 publications focused on British art and architecture, and over 25 collected archives which include papers of eminent art historians such as Ellis K. Waterhouse, Oliver Millar, Brian Sewell and Brinsley Ford. It also holds the records of its own institutional archives, including a growing oral history collection. The centre compiled its own photographic archive from 1970 to 1996 and now also holds the Tate photographic archive. All of these research collections are available to consult in the centre's Public Study Room. As well as being incorporated as a British educational charity, the centre is part of Yale University and provides teaching in London for Yale students, through the successful Yale-in-London scheme. The centre supports a publication programme through Yale University Press and co-ordinates its activities with the sister institution, the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. The centre administers a comprehensive programme of grants and fellowships designed to support research into the history of British art, and hosts workshops, symposia, conferences and regular series of seminars. The centre is a registered charity under English law and is a member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History.

Bedford Square is a garden square in the Bloomsbury district of the Borough of Camden in London, England.

NYU London is an academic centre of New York University located in London, United Kingdom. It is one of NYU's 14 global academic centres, and the largest of these which does not grant its own degrees, hosting around 480 students each semester.

The Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club was founded in London in 1899 as a residential Club for Gentlemen. At the club's foundation, it was open (principally) to past and present members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The club's original purpose was the performance of chamber music but expanded over the years to include solo instrumental music, vocal music, orchestral music and opera. Its first premises were at 47 Leicester Square but from 1914 to 1940 the club was situated at 6 Bedford Square. Ladies were first admitted in 1938. After 1940 the club ceased to be a residential club. Today the club provides music-making activities in central London with membership open to all. It has an association with the University College London Chamber Music Club but no longer maintains connections with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The Museum Tavern is a Grade II listed public house at 49 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London.It was built from about 1855–64 by William Finch Hill and Edward Lewis Paraire. It traces its origins back to 1723. From 1723 to 1762 the pub was called the Dog and Duck (so called because duck hunting was popular in the ponds in the Long Fields behind Montagu House in the 17th and 18th centuries). It is a CAMRA Heritage Pub, with a Regionally Important historic interior. Unusually, it is a regular outlet for Theakston's Old Peculier on cask.Karl Marx was a notable regular to this pub as it was in close proximity to the British Museum Reading Room, where he wrote Das Kapital.

The Elgin Marbles (), also known as the Parthenon Marbles (Greek: Γλυπτά του Παρθενώνα, lit. "sculptures of the Parthenon"), are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias and his assistants. They are original parts of the Parthenon and other sacred and ceremonial structures built on the Acropolis of Athens in the 5th century BCE. The collection is on display in the British Museum, in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery. From 1801 to 1812, agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheion, and had them transported by sea to Britain. Elgin argued as his authority for this that he had obtained an official decree (a firman) from the Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman Empire which, as ruler of Greece, was at that time the legal owner of the sculptures. This firman has not been found in the Ottoman archives despite its wealth of documents from the same period and its veracity is disputed. The Acropolis Museum displays a portion of the complete frieze, aligned in orientation and within sight of the Parthenon, with the position of the missing elements clearly marked and space left should they be returned to Athens.In Britain, the acquisition of the collection was supported by some, while some others, such as Lord Byron, likened the Earl's actions to vandalism or looting. Following a public debate in Parliament and its subsequent exoneration of Elgin, he sold the Marbles to the British government in 1816. They were then passed into the trusteeship of the British Museum, where they are now on display in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery. After gaining its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, the newly founded Greek state began a series of projects to restore its looted monuments and art. It has expressed its disapproval of Elgin's removal of the Marbles from the Acropolis and the Parthenon, which is regarded as one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. International efforts to repatriate the Marbles to Greece were intensified in the 1980s by then Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri, and there are now many organisations actively campaigning for the Marbles' return, several united as part of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures. The Greek government itself continues to urge the return of the marbles to Athens so as to be unified with the remaining marbles and for the complete Parthenon frieze sequence to be restored, through diplomatic, political and legal means.In 2014, UNESCO offered to mediate between Greece and the United Kingdom to resolve the dispute, although this was later turned down by the British Museum on the basis that UNESCO works with government bodies, not trustees of museums. In 2021, UNESCO issued its first decision on the Parthenon Marbles, calling for the United Kingdom to return them to Greece.

The Department of the Middle East (formerly Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, then Department of Ancient Near East), numbering some 330,000 works, forms a significant part of the collections of the British Museum, and the world's largest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. These cover Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period and include objects from the beginning of Islam in the 7th century. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world with entire suites of rooms panelled in alabaster bas-reliefs from Assyrian palaces at Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad. Only the Middle East collections of the Louvre and the Pergamon Museum rival it in the range and quality of artefacts.

Congress House is the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), a British organisation that represents most of the UK's trade unions. It is also an events venue, Congress Centre. In 1948, David du Roi Aberdeen won an architectural competition to design the new TUC headquarters building in Great Russell Street, London. Staff began to move into the offices in 1956. Congress House was officially opened on 27 March 1958 along with the unveiling of a giant pietà-style statue of a woman holding her dead son. Carved in place in the internal courtyard by Jacob Epstein, it was intended as a memorial to the dead trade unionists of both world wars.The front of the building is dominated by a bronze sculpture by Bernard Meadows representing the spirit of trade unionism with the strong helping the weak. The main facing material of the façade is polished grey Cornish granite.Congress House was one of the earliest post-war buildings to be listed at Grade II*, in 1988.In 2015, an ETFE roof was installed over the internal courtyard which enabled the glass roof of the conference centre below to be reinstated and affords protection to the Epstein statue.In 2018, an extensive redevelopment of the rear of the building was carried out, creating a new entrance, reception, offices and staff facilities. Known as 'The Rookery', the new development includes a public artwork by German artist Eva Berendes inspired by traditional trade union badges.

The Shabaka Stone, sometimes Shabaqo, is a relic incised with an ancient Egyptian religious text, which dates from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. In later years, the stone was likely used as a millstone, which damaged the hieroglyphs. This damage is accompanied by other intentional defacements, leaving the hieroglyphic inscription in poor condition.

The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, lectures, symposia and publications have given it a central position in global discussions and developments within contemporary architectural culture.

The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, London, on 17 October 1814. It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total. The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. The brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats after the accident. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery used to stand. Meux & Co went into liquidation in 1961.

Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest museum in the United Kingdom, and several educational institutions, including University College London and a number of other colleges and institutes of the University of London as well as its central headquarters, the New College of the Humanities, the University of Law, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Medical Association and many others. Bloomsbury is an intellectual and literary hub for London, as home of world-known Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of the Harry Potter series, and namesake of the Bloomsbury Set, a group of British intellectuals which included author Virginia Woolf, biographer Lytton Strachey, and economist John Maynard Keynes. Bloomsbury began to be developed in the 17th century under the Earls of Southampton, but it was primarily in the 19th century, under the Duke of Bedford, that the district was planned and built as an affluent Regency era residential area by famed developer James Burton. The district is known for its numerous garden squares, including Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square and Bedford Square.Bloomsbury's built heritage is currently protected by the designation of a conservation area and a locally based conservation committee. Despite this, there is increasing concern about a trend towards larger and less sensitive development, and the associated demolition of Victorian and Georgian buildings.