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British Museum Reading Room

1857 establishments in the United KingdomBritish LibraryBritish MuseumBuildings and structures completed in 1857Buildings and structures in Bloomsbury
DomesGrade I listed library buildingsUse British English from August 2015
British Museum Reading Room, reading desk F1
British Museum Reading Room, reading desk F1

The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room remains in its original form at the British Museum. Designed by Sydney Smirke and opened in 1857, the Reading Room was in continual use until its temporary closure for renovation in 1997. It was reopened in 2000, and from 2007 to 2017 it was used to stage temporary exhibitions. As of 2021, it remains closed to the public while its future use remains under discussion.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article British Museum Reading Room (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

British Museum Reading Room
Great Court, London Bloomsbury (London Borough of Camden)

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Wikipedia: British Museum Reading RoomContinue reading on Wikipedia

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N 51.519444444444 ° E -0.12694444444444 °
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Reading Room

Great Court
WC1B 3DE London, Bloomsbury (London Borough of Camden)
England, United Kingdom
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British Museum Reading Room, reading desk F1
British Museum Reading Room, reading desk F1
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British Museum
British Museum

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge.The museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Anglo-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. The museum's expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, 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. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions.Its ownership of a small percentage of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy through repatriation claims, most notably in the case of the Elgin Marbles of Greece, and the Rosetta Stone of Egypt.