British Museum best day/times

I love the British Museum but it is one of those venues where there is SO much to see that I can exhaust my brain before I've seen "everything". For myself I try to limit it to 2.5-3 hours then make myself leave and go outside.

I recommend looking at their website and picking out a few areas that will have things that interest you.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/

It's been years since I've been in the rooms with the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles because they are always so crowded. I LOVE to visit the Lewis Chessmen...their little faces are so cute and full of life!....and of course the Sutton Hoo hoard.

I'm always tempted to visit early in the AM because I'm a morning person but it gets crowded quickly. This next time I'm going later in the afternoon to see if that makes a difference.

You cannot really see all of the British Museum even in one full day, so don't try. You'll want to take the time to read at least some of the posted explanatory material so you know what you're looking at. As already suggested, review the website and choose a few areas to focus on. Note that, though the museum is free, it might have a special exhibition that has an entrance fee and requires a timed ticket. Check the museum website so you don't miss out on something that might be especially interesting to you. Occasionally a special exhibition is so popular that it sells out in advance.

This is what I know or have heard about crowds:

• Staff told me weekends tend to busiest, then Fridays during the daytime (see below re: Friday evenings). Obviously, holidays would be busy as well, and probably school-holiday periods, because it's a popular family outing. A LondonWalks guide told me it's always busier on rainy days.

• The Egyptian exhibition is the most popular and thus the most crowded. In general, the ground floor is a lot more crowded than the upper floor.

• The line on the back side of the building (Montague Place) tends to be shorter than the line at the Great Russell Place entrance. However, all groups are funneled to Montague Place, and on my most recent visit the metal detectors there had suddenly gone on the fritz. As a result, they sent everyone other than tour groups back around to the front of the building, where the line had naturally grown longer.

• I never made it over there before opening time; perhaps arriving at, say, 9:45 AM would mean a shorter line--but I don't know that it would be enough shorter to make up for the 15 minutes hanging around before the museum even opens at 10 AM. Arriving right around opening time on multiple occasions last September, I had to wait in line about 30 minutes. It's not a bad idea to try an afternoon arrival time, but I don't know whether it will make too much difference Saturday through Thursday.

• The Museum is open late (until 8:30 PM) on Fridays. As on other days, museum personnel start shooing people out at least 10 minutes before closing time. The museum definitely got a lot quieter after around 5 PM or so on the Friday I visited. If you have a free Friday evening, I think that's the least-crowded time to be there. However, there are quite a few other museums also open that evening, so you have to decide which is the most important to you. (But the British Museum's the one that's usually the most crowded, I think.)

The Museum has a large, casual, grab-and-go cafe on the ground floor in the atrium. You can't miss it. There's a nicer, considerably more expensive, sit-down restaurant upstairs that serves lunch and then afternoon tea (a relative bargain at 40 GBP, I'd say). A reservation is advised at the latter. Somewhere there's a pizzeria; I encountered a subtle sign for it as I was wandering around. None of the food purveyors are open late on Fridays. In fact, nothing except maybe the atrium cafe was open after 3 PM or so on my most recent Friday visit. Perhaps the early closing was due to staffing shortages (Brexit strikes again, I suppose). Based on my experience last September, I would not totally trust the cafe/restaurant hours on the museum's website.

The British Museum is absolutely huge, though I was able to take in most of it except the Asian collection in one full (and very long day) with a few breaks. I came back one of the evenings the museum was open and saw the Asian collection then. It’s pretty much impossible to see everything in a day. Definitely take in the Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles first thing when it opens if you can — Pam is right about them being very popular.

We usually try to go in the early morning. As for what to see, the British Museum used to have a highlights tour brochure at the entrance that would show you the highlights like the Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, etc. We have done that and thought it was a good 1-2 hour tour and we saw about all we could see.

If you want to take pictures of the Rosetta Stone, get there early as it is usually so crowded you can't get near it. Don't be shocked at how small and unassuming it is. I always get a kick of how the Rosetta Stone is famous but the actual Frenchman who copied the text and cracked the code is pretty much lost to history.

Finally, the cafe in the middle of the museum is a nice place for a tea/coffee break.

usually so crowded you can't get near it

I have found with a little (lot) patience and moving forward when some space opens up, you can get to the front in fairly short order to get your pictures, just don't set up camp for the next few hours ... take your pictures, enjoy the moment and history you are seeing, and move on so others have a turn ... and don't be rude and try to squeeze in when there is little to no room or throw an elbow or two to get someone out of your way ... only took me a few minutes of courteous jostling through the crowd to work my way front and center to view the Mona Lisa.

I visited last April and while it was a museum I felt had things I might enjoy, it took me 4 trips to London to finally make time for it. I had a timed ticket for 1 pm on a Friday and it was fine, not overly crowded. I had researched what appealed to me most and went straight there--the artifacts from Sutton Hoo, and other similar digs. I was sick that day and would otherwise have also spent time in the Egyptian rooms--hard to say how much time is needed for a thorough exploration, I spent about 2 hours on one floor.

The Museum also has a copy of the Rosetta Stone in a different part of the museum.

There's a huge reproduction of the Rosetta Stone in Figeac, the French hometown of Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered it. It's essentially the pavement of the small square outside the Musee Champollion. Coming across that unexpectedly was really cool. Figeac is a picturesque town of about 10,000 in the Lot, in southwestern France near the Dordogne.

I was there today in middle of the afternoon. Yes, it's a Monday afternoon in March...

Couple of observations from previous comments:
- lots of people but really nothing that crowded
- no line at Montague Place entrance, nor a metal detector. Security was looking into
backpacks & purses, but that was it.
- didn't need to book any tickets ahead of time
- Elgin Marbles had lots of space and the Rosetta Stone crowd moved pretty quickly

We took a London Walks tour of the British Museum. We were very pleased with it as an introduction.

Agree with London Walks, I found it a good way to get an overview of the museum and also keep focused. Far too often, in massive museums, I feel like I wander around without really seeing anything.