Tourist Attraction in Oxford:
Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology is part of the museum system of the University of Oxford, in the homonymous city. It was founded in 1683 and is one of the oldest public museums in the world. It is located on Beaumont Street, in the center of town. He owns, among other collections, the Bates Collection. the Creswell Archive, and a section of egiptology. It also includes, of course, collections of ancient and modern art. At the moment, several galleries are closed for renovations. It has its name for the collector and historian Elias Ashmole, who collected the works that went to constitute the first nucleus of the museum. The museum provides a worthy accommodation to the items collected by Elias Ashmole and John Tradescant the Elder. The list of works accumulated by the two was vast, and spanned into every artistic field; There were in fact ancient coins, books, engravings, samples of minerals and embalmed specimens of animal species. The collection even included a stuffed dodo, but in 1755 it was so devoured by the cobwebs that the curators of the museum decided to burn, with the exception of the head and claw. The museum was officially inaugurated on May 24, 1683, thanks to the impetus of Robert Plot who became the first director. The original museum site, now known as 'Old Ashmolean', is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. After transferring the various collections into new museums, the Old Ashmolean building at Broad Street was degraded to the Oxford English Dictionary office. Since 1924, the spaces have been occupied by the Museum of the History of Science, which preserves the scientific tools donated to the university by Lewis Evans. The current building, designed by Charles Cockerell in 1841-45 in neoclassical style, is located on Beaumont Street. The museum boasts a rich and valuable heritage of works of art, collecting some of the most important collections of Pre-Raphaelite, Tapestry, and English Silver. Noteworthy is the collection of archaeological artefacts, including the finds of Arthur Evans, numerous Greek and Minoan pottery and a remarkable number of Egyptian finds. Drawings by Michelangelo, Raffaello Sanzio and Leonardo da Vinci; Works by Pablo Picasso, Giambattista Pittoni, Paolo Uccello (notable Night Hunting), Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, John Constable, Tiziano, Claude Lorrain, Samuel Palmer, John Singer Sargent, Gustave Courbet, William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones; Watercolor and Drawings by William Turner; The Stradivarius Messiah, a violin made in Cremona by Antonio Stradivari; The Pissarro Family Archive, donated to the museum in the 1950s, is made up of paintings, prints, drawings, books and letters by Camille Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro, Orovida Camille Pissarro, and other members of the Pissarro family

Attractions in Oxford