The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, commonly referred to simply as the Great Court, is the covered central quadrangle of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in London. It was redeveloped during the late 1990s to a design by Foster and Partners, from a 1970s design by

Colin St John Wilson Sir Colin Alexander St John Wilson, Royal Institute of British Architects, FRIBA, Royal Academy, RA, (14 March 1922 – 14 May 2007) was an English architect, lecturer and author. With his partner MJ Long, Wilson spent over 30 years progressing t ...

. The court was opened by Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

in 2000.

Description

The court has a tessellated glass roof, engineered by Buro HappoldQueen Elizabeth II Great Court, British Museum
accessed 22 November 2010 and built by

Waagner-Biro Waagner Biro is a Vienna-based group of companies formerly part of the same group which have developed into separately owned, independent companies operating in steel and mechanical engineering. Collectively, the companies have about 1000 employees ...

, covering the entire court, and surrounds the original circular British Museum Reading Room in the centre, now a museum. It is the largest covered square in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. The glass and steel roof is made up of 4,878 unique steel members connected at 1,566 unique nodes and 1,656 pairs of glass windowpanes making up 6,100 m² of glazing; each of a unique shape because of the undulating nature of the roof. Controversially, some of the stone in the court is from

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, rather than being Portland stone from southern

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

as agreed in the original contract with the masons. Within the Great Court, there are shops and a café. The court acts as a central linking point for the museum, somewhat like I. M. Pei's

Louvre Pyramid The Louvre Pyramid () is a large glass-and-metal entrance way and skylight designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei. The pyramid is in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace in Paris, surrounded by three smaller pyr ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Construction

The central courtyard of the British Museum was occupied by the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

until 1997, when it moved to St Pancras. At that time the entire courtyard was filled with bookshelves, three storeys high (the "book stacks"). To get from one side of the museum to the other, visitors had to go around. Once the Library had moved out, the book stacks were cleared and the Great Court constructed in this central courtyard. A new 'ground' level was created, a story higher than the original courtyard, with the space below used to accommodate the Clore Education Centre and the African galleries (which had been housed at the Museum of Mankind since 1970). The South Portico was largely rebuilt, with two new lifts incorporated for disabled access to the upper levels of the museum. A new gridshell glass roof, designed and built by Austrian specialists

, was provided over the entire courtyard to create a covered space at the centre of the museum. The British Library Reading Room at the centre of the courtyard was retained and refurbished for use as the Museum library and information centre. The Reading Room had no outer wall; the book stacks came right up to the back of the Reading Room shelves. So a new outer wall was created to protect the Reading Room, to support the new roof and to conceal the ventilation ducts serving the spaces below. North of the Reading Room there is a block with a museum shop at ground level, a gallery for temporary exhibitions above and a restaurant above that, just below the glass roof.

Education facilities

The Clore Education Centre is housed in the lower level of the Great Court. It comprises the: * BP Lecture Theatre * Hugh and Catherine Stevenson Theatre * Raymond and Beverly Sackler seminar room * Studio, used for art and craft activities * Claus Moser seminar room * Ford Centre for Young Visitors * Samsung Digital Discovery Centre

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( , ; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa f ...

spoke at the inauguration of the BP Lecture Theatre on 16 November 2000. He supported the Museum's global role.

Sculptures

Upon the Great Court's opening to the public in 2000, twelve sculptures from the British Museum's collection were installed on the main floor of the concourse: * A stela of the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (9th century BC) * A marble Lion of Knidos,

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

(3rd century BC) * Two heads of Pharaoh Amenhotep III () * Two

obelisks An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' rotisserie, spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called Obelisk (hieroglyph), ...

of the Egyptian King Nectanebo II () * Hoa Hakananai'a, a statue from

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

(Date unknown, but between 1200 and 1800 AD), later moved to Room 24 * Two totem poles from British Columbia (19th century AD) * A Roman equestrian statue (2nd century AD) * An Irish memorial slab carved in Ogham script (5th century AD) * An Anglo-Saxon cross shaft (late 8th/early 9th century AD) * A pair of Chinese guardian figures (17th century AD) * A column base from

Persepolis Persepolis (; ; ) was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (). It is situated in the plains of Marvdasht, encircled by the southern Zagros mountains, Fars province of Iran. It is one of the key Iranian cultural heritage sites and ...

(5th century BC) There were initial plans for a new, thirteenth sculpture to be commissioned from Anish Kapoor, but these were scrapped. Image:British Museum New Great Court.jpg, East Portico of Sir Robert Smirke's building; Roman equestrian statue visible in the foreground Image:Britmuseum.jpg, Hoa Hakananai'a Image:Sculpture in Great Court.jpg, File:British Museum Great Court roof.jpg, The Reading Room and Great Court roof as viewed from ground level

References

External links