British Museum's Pantheon-inspired Round Reading Room reopens for guided tours

The British Museum's Round Reading Room, a historic library space inspired by the Pantheon, reopens to the public on July 23, 2024, after eleven years of closure. Designed by Sydney Smirke and completed in 1857, the room features a 40-meter-diameter dome made of cast iron, concrete, glass, and papier-mâché. It was conceived by librarian Antonio Panizzi to house the museum's growing book collection, which had reached 520,000 volumes. The room once hosted literary figures such as Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and George Orwell, and Karl Marx wrote "Das Kapital" there. Free 20-minute guided tours will be offered every Tuesday at 11:00 and 12:00, limited to groups of 20 on a first-come, first-served basis. The room served as a reading room until 1997, when books were moved to the new British Library at St. Pancras. After restoration, it reopened in 2000 as a visitor information center, then hosted temporary exhibitions from 2007 to 2013, and later became the museum's archive for researchers. The decision to reopen for tours follows a successful trial last year.