British Museum’s historic reading room opens to public after 11 years

The British Museum’s vast and imposing round reading room reopened to all visitors this week after being closed for 11 years.

Designed by Sydney Smirke and opened in 1857, the Reading Room at the heart of the museum is inspired by the Pantheon in Rome and is considered one of London’s most impressive architectural wonders.

“Using cast iron, concrete, glass and the latest heating and ventilation systems, it was a masterpiece of mid-19th-century technology,” the British Museum says on its website. When it opened, it contained 25 miles of shelves. Visitors had to apply for a ticket: Karl Marx, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle, among others, succeeded.

In 1997 the books were moved to a new building, and the room was restored and opened to all visitors in 2000. It closed again in 2013 and was used for storage and archive management. Last year the museum’s chairman, George Osborne, said the extended closure was “not acceptable”, and weekly 20-minute tours have since been introduced. The public can now enter the space without a tour or ticket.