Pitt Rivers Museum

Walk into the Pitt Rivers Museum and you are surrounded by objects arranged not by country, but by what they do. Weapons sit beside tools, musical instruments beside ritual objects, and everyday objects beside things made for ceremony, creating an unusual journey through human cultures. Founded in Oxford in 1884, the museum grew from the collection of General Augustus Pitt-Rivers, who believed objects could be compared by their form and function. More than half a million objects now fill its densely packed galleries, ranging from masks and textiles to weapons, jewellery and archaeological finds from around the world.