Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum is recognized as Britain’s first public museum, established in sixteen eighty-three to house a collection donated by the antiquarian Elias Ashmole. Its current home on Beaumont Street is a neoclassical building erected between eighteen forty-one and eighteen forty-five. The original collection, which Ashmole received from the gardeners and travelers John Tradescant the Elder and his son, was once famously diverse, featuring natural history specimens such as the stuffed body of a dodo.