Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Ashmolean Museum opened in 1683 as both Britain's first public museum and the world's first university museum. Antiquarian Elias Ashmole donated his collections to Oxford University with a condition: the university must build a proper institution to house and display them. The core of Ashmole's gift came from the Tradescant family, father and son gardeners who had traveled the world collecting botanical, geological, and ethnographic specimens. Their cabinet of curiosities included the last stuffed dodo seen in Europe, though only its head and one claw survive today.

The present building on Beaumont Street dates from 1845, and a major redevelopment in 2009 transformed the galleries. Michelangelo's studies for the St. Anne with Virgin and Child represent the drawings collection's Renaissance strength. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is well represented through works by William Holman Hunt, Millais, and Ford Madox Brown. The collection spans from Egyptian mummies to Pissarro's landscapes. By opening to the public in the 17th century, the Ashmolean pioneered the revolutionary idea that knowledge and culture should be accessible to all, not locked in private cabinets.