Oxford Museums

Museums also hold many treasures which give an exciting insight. Oxford has some of the imposing museums. The Ashmolean Museum is the foremost internationally, but Oxford has many wonderful museums to explore and enjoy.

The History of Science Museum is a collection of historic scientific instruments. The current collection contains around 15,000 objects from antiquity, quadrants, astrolabes (the most complete collection in the world with 136 instruments), sundials, early mathematical instruments (used for calculating, astronomy, navigation, surveying and drawing), optical instruments (microscopes, telescopes and cameras), a reference library regarding the history of scientific instruments that includes manuscripts, incunabula and others.

It is located in the basement of the Faculty of Music building on St.Aldates. This museum contains a hugely enjoyable jumble of historic musical instruments which includes keyboards, wind, percussion, woodwind and brass.

The Museum of Oxford covers the history of the city and the Oxford University. The displays include original artefacts, treasures from Oxford colleges, archaeology and architecture including extensive exhibits on the University.

Sometimes known simply as Oxford University Museum, it displays many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens. Today, the head and foot of Dodo displayed at the museum are the most complete remains of a single dodo anywhere in the world. The collection covers natural history, including gemstones, meteorites, dinosaurs, other fossils and replicas of some of these footprints.

The museum is divided into four sections: Geology (covering the Palaeontological collections), Mineralogy (mineral and rock collections), Zoology and Entomology.

The Pitt Rivers Museum is located at the east of Oxford University Museum of Natural History and can only be accessed through that building. It is one of the most popular museums in Oxford, displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford. The original donation consisted of approximately 20,000 items, now its have grown to 500,000 items, many of which have been donated by travellers, scholars and missionaries.

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