"Until recently, the neoclassical British Museum in London was relatively unknown among the monuments of Europe. However, the opening of its Foster and Partners-designed Queen Elizabeth II Great Court has awakened a sleeping giant. This refurbishment can best be described as a fusion of conservation and innovation, merging old with new, to finally open up the museum to a new and admiring public.

"In 1823, architect Robert Smirke was commissioned to design a building in London to house the King's Library and to provide a proper home for the museum's collections. It took some 24 years to build.

"The original museum had four principal wings arranged around an open, two-acre (0.8-hectare), quadrangle-shaped courtyard. No sooner had the British Museum been completed in 1857 than a growing demand for storage space dictated that a new copper-domed reading room be built in the middle of the courtyard.

"The great Round Reading Room became a popular haven, used by such luminaries as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Oscar Wilde, Leon Trotsky, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, and Virginia Woolf."

— Don Barker, "Foster and Partners Roof the Great Court", in ArchitectureWeek No. 38, 2001.0214, pD1.1.