Museum sights in Oxford
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A
University Museum of Natural History
Oxford has some excellent (free) museums, among them the University Museum of Natural History, famous for its dinosaur and dodo skeletons, and the attached (and incomparable) Pitt Rivers Museum, an Aladdin’s cave spread over three floors and crammed with such things as voodoo dolls and shrunken heads from the Caribbean and Pacific. Visitors are given torches (flashlights) to ‘explore’ the lower Court Gallery and are allowed to open all the drawers. Great stuff.
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B
Ashmolean Museum
Britain's oldest public museum, the Ashmolean reopened in 2009 after a massive £61 million redevelopment and is now being lauded as the finest university museum in the world. The makeover has made the once intimidating building and stuffy collection a real joy to browse, with a giant atrium, glass walls revealing galleries on different levels, and a beautiful rooftop restaurant.
The museum was established in 1683 when Elias Ashmole presented the university with the collection of artefacts amassed by John Tradescant, gardener to Charles I. It contains everything from Egyptian, Islamic and Chinese art to rare porcelain, tapestries and silverware, priceless musical instrumen…
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C
Museum of Oxford
A bit dated but still interesting, this is the place to brush up on the history of the city and university, from Oxford's prehistoric mammoths to its history of car manufacturing.
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D
Museum of Oxford
A bit dated but still interesting , this is the place to brush up on the history of the city and university, from Oxford’s prehistoric mammoths to its history of car manufacturing.
reviewed
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E
Museum of the History of Science
Science, art, celebrity and nostalgia come together at this fascinating museum where the exhibits include everything from a blackboard used by Einstein to the world's finest collection of historic scientific instruments, all housed in a beautiful 17th-century building.
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University & Pitt Rivers Museums
Housed in a glorious Victorian Gothic building with slender, cast-iron columns, ornate capitals and a soaring glass roof, the University Museumis worth a visit for its architecture alone. However, the real draw is the mammoth natural-history collection of more than 5 million exhibits, ranging from exotic insects and fossils to a towering T. rex skeleton.
Hidden away through a door at the back of the main exhibition hall, thePitt Rivers Museum isa treasure trove of weird and wonderful displays to satisfy every armchair adventurer's wildest dreams. In the half light inside are glass cases and mysterious drawers stuffed with Victorian explorers' prized booty. Feathered cloaks…
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