Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Visiting FitzWilliam Museum is MUST when you come to Caambridge.
As museums go, I personaly think that FitzWilliam is as good as British museum in London.
In some ways eaven better. Their collection is so deverse and have sooo much potential.
lots of Mummies, Turners & good selection of Picasos.
Worth good few hours of your time to explore.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum and was founded in 1816 with the bequest of the library and art collection of the 7th Viscount FitzWilliam.

The museum has five departments: Antiquities; Applied Arts; Coins and Medals; Manuscripts and Printed Books; and Paintings, Drawings and Prints.

email fitzmuseum-enquiries@lists.cam.ac.uk

The Fitzwilliam museum sits as a greek-looking classical pile on Trumpington Street, Cambridge.

We are talking high art here - paintings, sculpture, ceramics and the like. The great names will adorn the walls and floors. You won't find publicity-seeking 'Blockbuster' art exhibitions here.

The curators seem to spend most of their time trying to tame hoardes of French schoolchildren attempting to run riot through the place. They should be more wary of old age pensioners who fall over their own shoelaces and smash Quing Dynasty vases into a thousand and one pieces - as happened in January 2006. I believe they are still glueing bits back together again.

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The Fitzwilliam Museum just completely renovated the Egyptian collections in May 2006 and added new displays.

Additional highlights of the museum include relics from Rome, Greece, Cyprus, Japan, Korea, and China. There is also an exhibit of armor and weapons from old England (see photo #2). Upstairs you will find galleries of paintings from British, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch masters.

The entrance hall of the museum is itself an attraction. (See photo #5) The Victorian interior has mosaic floors, marble columns, descending staircases, a sculpture gallery, and a pair of ostriches decorating the Corinthian portico.

Don't miss section 23, where you will find a significant frieze from Gandhara in northern Pakistan. After Alexander the Great passed through this region, many sculptors were influenced by Greek classical styles and began blending those with local Eastern traditions of both style and subject. What you'll see in this exhibit is a fascinating frieze of the Greek god Hercules standing next to Buddha.

The relics from Crete are of special interest to those who study the Minoan civilization. You will see a clay tablet with Linear B script from the 14th century BC. It was donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum by Sir Arthur Evans, who is credited with much of the archeological work at the Palace of Knossos. Also from Knossos is an archaic coin from 500 BC showing the legendary Minotaur running left with its head facing those who peer at it through the glass display. I also was amazed by the copper tweezers found in Crete which date back to 1550 BC, as it appears they could still be used today!

Chinese relics include Ming dynasty ceramics from Jingdezhen, Han dynasty tomb tiles from Jin Cun village near Luoyang, and a Tang dynasty tomb figure of a warrior stepping on a bull (see photo #3).

This massive neoclassical edifice with its vast portico takes its name from the seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam, who bequeathed his fabulous art treasures to his old university in 1816. The building in which they are stored was begun by George Basevi in 1837, but he did not live to see its completion in 1848. While working on Ely Cathedral he stepped back to admire his handiwork, slipped and fell to his death.

Displayed in twenty seven galleries, highlights include antiquities from the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome and Cyprus, English and European pottery and glass, sculpture, furniture, armour, illuminated manuscripts, oriental art, Korean ceramics, coins and medals, masterpieces of painting and drawing by Domenico Veneziano, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck, outstanding works by great British artists including Gainsborough, Reynolds, Stubbs and Constable and a fine collection of twentieth century art.

In addition to the riches of the permanent collections, there is a wide-ranging programme of temporary exhibitions, events, courses and activities for all ages on offer.

Open from Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 - 17:00 and Sunday 12:00 - 17:00.
Closed Mondays(except Bank Holidays between 12:00 - 17:00)Admission is free.

It's free! That's what I like (me an old miser that I am). It's brochure seem to suggest that it has a great collection including an Egyptian exhibit. I didn't see the exhibits for want of time though the reception hall looks quite impressive. So is its porch.

A wide variety of exhibits are set out here, ranging from French artists to small artefacts from long forgotten peoples who lived in the area around Greece.

It’s fun place to spend a few hours here, if you need to get away from it all.

This museum is free to enter although they do suggest that adults pay a discretionary charge.

The collections of the museum include:

-Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities;
-The Henderson collection of armour;
Medieval and Renaissance objects - enamels, ivories, as well as scientific instruments;
- English, French,Italian, Dutch and Flemish Paintings;
-Musical Manuscripts and Literary Autographs Collection