About

This free exhibition features wonderful items donated to BRLSI over the years – although the display represents only a tiny fraction the 150,000 artefacts, specimens and books cared for in their Collection.

In the days before cheap international travel, video documentaries and the internet, museums were windows into the unknown. For the people of Bath, visiting the Institution was one of the best ways to learn about the world.

The World Revealed features key people and events in the Institution's history to demonstrate how it survived the fluctuations of changing times over two centuries. A selection of objects, many on show for the first time in living memory, will explore the circumstances in which they found their way into the Collection, and what this reveals of the shifts in our scientific, cultural and moral understanding over this period.

Featuring rarely displayed objects including:

1850s photographs of the city of Bath
Jurassic fossils collected by the famous Mary Anning
A Romano-British brooch from 1st Century AD excavated in Lansdown
A phial of the brandy in which Lord Nelson's body was preserved after Trafalgar
Relics from the lost Franklin Arctic expedition
An ivory figurine from the ruins of Pompeii
…and many more!