1 British Museum The British Museum – the world's oldest public museum – boasts more than 8 million items, from the stone tools of early man to comtemporary 20th-century prints. The collection began with the bequest of physician and antiquarian Sir Hans Sloane in 1753. Then, through the 18th and 19th centuries, travellers and emissaries, such as Captain James Cook, Lord Curzon and Charles Townley, augmented the set with treasures from