Pitt Rivers Museum
About
The Pitt Rivers Museum is one of the most extraordinary museums in Britain — half a million archaeological and ethnographic objects crammed into a Victorian gallery that looks like a cabinet of curiosities on a monumental scale. Shrunken heads, totem poles, samurai armour, magic charms, musical instruments from every continent, a Hawaiian feather cloak — it's overwhelming in the best possible way. Unlike most museums, objects are arranged by type rather than culture or period — so you'll find cutting tools from every civilisation side by side, or masks from across the world in one case. The effect is to make connections you'd never otherwise see. The lighting is deliberately low, the cases are Victorian, and the handwritten labels add to the atmosphere of scholarly obsession. You enter through the back of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (which is also excellent and free — don't skip the dinosaur skeletons). Together they make one of the best free museum visits in the country. The Pitt Rivers shop sells some genuinely unusual gifts. Allow at least an hour, ideally two.
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ 01865 270927
Tickets & Pricing
Free entry.
Opening Times
Mon 12:00-17:00, Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00.
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