Editing British Museum (section)

===Collecting from the wider world (1850–1875)===
The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of [[Robert Smirke (architect)|Robert Smirke]]'s 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for [[Assyria]]n sculptures and [[Sydney Smirke]]'s [[British Museum Reading Room|Round Reading Room]], with space for a million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in [[South Kensington]], which would later become the [[Natural History Museum, London|British Museum of Natural History]].

Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian [[Anthony Panizzi]]. Under his supervision, the British Museum Library (now part of the [[British Library]]) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the [[National Library of Paris]].<ref name="world and its people"/> The [[Quadrangle (architecture)|quadrangle]] at the centre of Smirke's design proved to be a waste of valuable space and was filled at Panizzi's request by a circular Reading Room of cast iron, designed by Smirke's brother, Sydney Smirke.<ref>{{cite web|author=Dickens Charles Jr.|author-link=Charles Dickens Jr.|year=1879|title=Museum, British|work=[[Dickens's Dictionary of London]]|url=http://www.victorianlondon.org/dickens/dickens-mus.htm|access-date=22 August 2007|quote=Beyond the new Lycian room is the READING ROOM: [...]; circular structure; original suggestion of Thomas Watts, improved by A. (Sir A.) Panizzi, carried out by Mr. Sidney Smirke; [...]|archive-date=27 September 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203001/http://www.victorianlondon.org/dickens/dickens-mus.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

Until the mid-19th century, the museum's collections were relatively circumscribed but, in 1851, with the appointment to the staff of [[Augustus Wollaston Franks]] to curate the collections, the museum began for the first time to collect British and European medieval antiquities, [[prehistory]], branching out into Asia and diversifying its holdings of [[ethnography]]. A real coup for the museum was the purchase in 1867, over French objections, of the [[Louis, Duke of Blacas|Duke of Blacas]]'s wide-ranging and valuable collection of antiquities. Overseas excavations continued and [[John Turtle Wood]] discovered the remains of the 4th&nbsp;century&nbsp;BC [[Temple of Artemis]] at [[Ephesus|Ephesos]], another [[Seven Wonders of the Ancient World|Wonder of the Ancient World]].<ref>South from Ephesus – An Escape From The Tyranny of Western Art, pp. 33–34,(Brian Sewell, 2002, {{ISBN|1-903933-16-1}})</ref>