British Museum
Robert Smirke’s museum has a south front with 44 Ionic columns, modelled on Greek temples in Asia Minor. It is one of the largest Greek Revival buildings in Britain. At its centre today lies Norman Foster’s glass-roofed courtyard from 2000.
The British Museum was founded in 1753 and grew rapidly, not least after the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon were bought in 1816. The old Montagu House was no longer big enough, and in 1823 Robert Smirke was commissioned to build anew. Construction proceeded wing by wing and was finished in 1852. The Greek model suited the collections: the museum became a temple for the ancient sculptures it was to display.
In the middle of the quadrangle the round Reading Room was built in 1857, where Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf and Arthur Conan Doyle were among the readers. When the British Library moved out, Foster and Partners turned the courtyard into the Great Court, one of the largest covered squares in Europe, with a roof of glass and steel made up of more than three thousand triangles. The meeting between Smirke’s columns and Foster’s roof shows how a Neoclassical building can be given a new life.