1-624-982 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Montagu House, Bloomsbury, 18th century, (1908). The house was purchased in 1754 as the first home of the British Museum and in 1757 the gardens were opened to the public, two years before visitors were admitted to the Museum's collections. The seventeenth-century building was gradually replaced by the present Museum buildings between 1823 and 1852.