A museum is an institution that collects, studies, exhibits and conserves objects for cultural and educational purposes. They are of several kinds. There are museums devoted to art, science, history, industry and technology.
The word ‘museum’ comes from the Greek word Mouseion which means ‘temple of the Muses’. The Muses were the goddesses of the arts. One of the first institutions, called Mouseion was founded in Alexandria, Egypt in the 3rd century B.C. Its aim was to collect information that might be of some interest to the scholars. The scholars used to live and carry out their research there. The museum displayed a collection of art pieces and antiquities like statues, astronomical and surgical instruments, elephant tusks and hides of rare animals.
Later kings and nobles started having their own museums by collecting art objects and antiques from different parts of the world. However, these were private museums, meant only for their families and friends.
After the French Revolution the doors of the French museums were opened to the general public. In 1793, during the revolution, the Republican Government established a national museum in Lauvre, Paris. For the first time in the 19th century buildings were specially designed for this purpose. One of the first buildings in Europe was the Atles Museum in Berlin, Germany. It was constructed in 1830.
Today, we have museums in almost all the big cities of the world. They are visited by thousands of people everyday. The oldest museum in the world is the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which was built in 1679. The largest museum in the world is the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was founded in 1874. The largest and the most visited museum in the United Kingdom is the British Museum which was opened for public in 1759. Bombay, Madras, Delhi and other big cities in India have museums devoted to different subjects.