Skip to main content
ad info

 
Middle East Asia-pacific Africa Europe Americas
CNN.com    world > europe world map
  Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback  

 

  Search
 
 

 
WORLD
TOP STORIES

Thousands dead in India; quake toll rapidly rising

Israelis, Palestinians make final push before Israeli election

Gates pledges $100 million for AIDS

Davos protesters face tear gas

(MORE)

TOP STORIES

Thousands dead in India; quake toll rapidly rising

Israelis, Palestinians make final push before Israeli election

Davos protesters face tear gas

(MORE)

MARKETS
4:30pm ET, 4/16
144.70
8257.60
3.71
1394.72
10.90
879.91
 


U.S.

POLITICS

LAW

TECHNOLOGY

ENTERTAINMENT

HEALTH

TRAVEL

FOOD

ARTS & STYLE



(MORE HEADLINES)
*
 
CNN Websites
Networks image


Museum's millennium make-over

Reading Room
The Reading Room at the centre of the new two-acre glass ceiling  

LONDON, England -- The British Museum's £100 million millennium makeover is set to be unveiled this week, revealing the largest covered courtyard in Europe.

On December 7, Queen Elizabeth II will open the centrepiece Great Court -- named in her honour -- which has been hidden to visitors for 150 years.

The courtyard had been designed as the hub of the museum by architect Robert Smirke in 1823, but was taken over by storage and the growing library collection.

A highlight of the new space is a glass ceiling made up of 3,312 pieces, each one a unique triangle. The roof's 800 tonnes of steel and glass covers 6,000 square metres.

  GALLERY

Museum make-over

 

The Foster and Partners-led redevelopment should allow the 5.5 million annual visitors to the museum -- second only in Britain's tourism stakes to Blackpool's Pleasure Beach amusement park -- to move more easily between the galleries. The Great Court adds up to 40 percent more public space to the museum.

It will also act as a self-contained cultural square housing a new education centre, African galleries, cafes, a restaurant and shops that will be open late into the evening.

At the heart of the Great Court is the round Reading Room, which has been restored and will be open to the general public. When it was last open to the public shortly after its opening in May 1857, almost 162,500 visitors came to see it in eight days.

The Reading Room was hailed as one of the great sights of London in 1857, and with the British Library's shift to another site in 1998, the way was clear to restore it.

The original azure blue, cream and gold colour scheme was uncovered under layers of paint from three decorations last century. About 25 km of 23.25 carat gold leaf now adorns the ceiling.

The public will be able to see where such influential people as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Rudyard Kipling once read.

Outrage

A new South Portico has been built, after the original one was demolished in the 1870s to enlarge the entrance hall.

There was widespread outrage by heritage groups following the discovery that the new portico had been built with a cheaper French limestone, rather than the Portland stone of the surrounding walls.

Sculptures in the Great Court include the Lion of Cnidos, a seven-and-a-half ton sculpture thought to date from 300 BC, which stood near the ancient city of Cnidos in modern southwest Turkey.

An Easter Island statue, Hoa Hakananai'a, collected during a surveying voyage by HMS Topaze in 1868, also stands in the court.

The re-opening of the Great Court is the centrepiece of the 250th anniversary museum development programme to be completed in 2003.

A new study centre, the restoration of the King's Library and the completion of the Wellcome Gallery of Ethnography are part of the redevelopment.



RELATED STORIES:
Inside London's most enigmatic house-museums
March 15, 2000
Nazi link to UK art treasures
October 27, 2000

RELATED SITE:
The British Museum

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

 Search   

Back to the top  © 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.