British Museum
The British Museum was a major museum devoted to human history and culture, located on Great Russell Street (PROSE: Attack of the Cybermen) in Bloomsbury, London. (PROSE: The Winning Side)
Exhibits[[edit] | [edit source]]
For most of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the last known stuffed dodo was kept in the British Museum by the Royal Society. (COMIC: Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses)
By 1921, the Elgin Marbles were present in the museum, (AUDIO: A Life in the Day) and they were still exhibited at the museum by the 1950s. (AUDIO: Parasite)
In 1926, a crystal skull carved by pre-Colombian Mesoamericans was present, as noted by Narayan. (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
By 2007, the Rosetta Stone was on display in the Egyptian gallery of the museum. (PROSE: The Stone Rose) That same year, a statue of Rose Tyler (dressed as the goddess Fortuna) and the foot of the Ogre of Hyfor Three were on display. (PROSE: The Stone Rose)
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
In 1868, the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa first met Beatrice Mapp in a tea shop near the British Museum. (AUDIO: The Boy That Time Forgot)
The Doctor once lent his reader's ticket for the British Museum to Karl Marx. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Apocalypse)
In the 1890s, the Sixth Doctor, Leela, George Litefoot, and Henry Gordon Jago visited the museum's reading room, where silence was expected. (AUDIO: The Hourglass Killers)
In autumn 1894, Professor Jolyon Tanner was the director of Egyptology at the British Museum. He called Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax to the museum to help him discover what was causing depression in anyone who read an artefact he called a sequel to the Book of the Dead. (PROSE: The Curious Case of the Misery Diary)
In November 1886, the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka visited the British Museum. Whilst there, they encountered Egyptian religious fanatics, who kidnapped Nyssa. (PROSE: The Sands of Time)
In 1921, Liv Chenka and Martin Donaldson visited the museum. (AUDIO: A Life in the Day)
In the 1950s, Torchwood One had a hidden room hidden behind the Elgin Marbles exhibit, which Norton Folgate accessed to find a way to kill parasitic mushroom creatures. (AUDIO: Parasite)
Polly Wright went on school trips to the British Museum. (PROSE: The Underwater Menace)
In November 1973, Barbara Chesterton took her son John to the museum to look at the Roman exhibit. (PROSE: Byzantium!)
In 1984, Victoria Waterfield was employed at the museum. (PROSE: Downtime)
Around the year 2000, the British Museum had the largest collection of Greek marble in the world, more than was kept in Athens itself. (AUDIO: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor)
Circa 2019, the Robinson Wing, dedicated to the present and recent past, was opened in the museum. It had been funded by Jack Robertson. (PROSE: Time Lapse)
In 2099, Del McAllen worked at the museum. (PROSE: Snowglobe 7)
In preparation for her expedition to the Library with the Felman Lux Corporation in the 51st century, River Song intended to visit the British Museum 4.0, as recorded in her diary. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
Alternate timelines[[edit] | [edit source]]
In an alternate timeline in which Nazi Germany won World War II, the British Museum was renamed the Reichsmuseum by the occupying forces. Most works of art and artefacts displayed there were taken by Hermann Goering to New Berlin, and the building was used to house the military archives. The Seventh Doctor, while posing as the Reichsinspektor General, visited the museum to consult the archives and find out when the timeline had changed. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
In an alternate timeline in the year 5000, the few remaining normal humans lived in what remained of the British Museum. (COMIC: A Stitch in Time)