Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museum
These two museums are located together, and each combines a stunning visual setting with extensive collections from the natural and human worlds.
Oxford Museum of Natural History
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History has been located in this impressive Victorian Gothic building since 1860 (above, at the time of our visit the museum also had an outdoor exhibit of tropical hardwood tree stumps). This "cathedral to science" has a glass roof supported by slender columns and arches, which are painted in intricate patterns of color, joining together Victorian cast iron technology, architecture and decorative arts. Each side of the interior Great Court has a brick-faced arcade with further exhibits, forming a cloister.
Gallery of Mammals, with "skeleton parade" near left..
The skeleton parade.
Iguanodon and Tyrannosaurus rex.
Tyrannosaurus rex.
History of Life aisle.
Exhibit of the "Oxford Dodo". Before this flightless kind of pigeon went extinct on its native island of Mauritius in the 17th century, a few live specimens had been brought to Europe, and one of them made it to Oxford, where some of its mummified parts have long been displayed in this museum.
Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College when he wrote "Alice in Wonderland", about fictional adventures of Alice Liddell, daughter of the college's Dean. Many characters in the story, including the dodo bird, were based on exhibits in this museum, to which he often brought Alice Liddell herself.
Pitt Rivers Museum
Adjoining the Natural History Museum is the Pitt Rivers Museum, with exhibits of anthropology and archaeology. The collections are not arranged by origin or age, but rather by what the objects are for, or how they were made, allowing objects of similar function from widely disparate cultures or ages to be found side by side in the exhibit cases. This makes the collections particularly well suited to anthropological studies.
