Highlights from the unparalleled British Museum

The Rosetta Stone, unearthed in 1799, enabled Egyptian writing to finally be decoded; the black slab dates from 196 BC

The Greek Revival façade has 44 columns in the Ionic order 14 meters high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Turkey

The Elgin marbles were originally part of the Parthenon in Athens and created around 440 BC; the removal of the marbles by the 7th Earl of Elgin is generally considered a theft but the British Museum has no plans to return them to Greece

Easter Island moai, 1000 AD; the 1973 movie classic, The Day of the Jackal, used the British Museum as a setting

Granted it would be hard to view the Elgin marbles in their original location high up on a temple but they just felt disjointed and incomplete here at the British Museum

The Earl of Elgin removed about half of the sculptures from the Parthenon with the remaining half now on display at the Acropolis Museum in Athens; you could spend days exploring in the British Museum and it's all free!

Mosaics from Ephesus, Turkey and Carthage, Tunisia; the British Museum collection today contains 8+ million objects; only 1% of these objects are on display at any given time in 194 rooms

King Ramesses II, 1279 BC; this statue, weighing more than 20 tons, was created from rock transported 200+ kms from Aswan

Painted wooden coffin from Thebes, 945 BC; founded in 1753, the British Museum opened its doors in 1759, 17 years before the Declaration of Independence

Relief with four figures of Bes, 1st c. BC; the popular dwarf god Bes, guardian of mothers and infants, was a ferocious protector of family and much relied upon to ward off evil

Colossal scarab, 1352 BC; the British Museum is the nation's most visited museum, with nearly seven million guests per year

Mosaic from Halicarnassus, Turkey; the British Museum is the second most visited art museum in the world, after the Louvre

Nereid Monument, Xanthos, Turkey, 380 BC; the most popular exhibition at the British Museum was in 1972 when artifacts from King Tut's tomb attracted almost 2 million visitors

Winged human-headed bulls, Nimrud, Iraq, 865 BC; you don't need to visit the British Museum in person since it's the largest indoor space on Google Street View

Black figured jug, Athens, 530 BC; the world-famous Reading Room has seen a veritable who’s who of legendary cultural figures, from Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx and Lenin to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Virginia Woolf