Royal Ontario Museum
Canada’s largest museum of world cultures and natural history, with its crystal-shaped extension.
The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada's largest museum of world cultures and natural history. It was established by an act of the Ontario legislature in 1912 and opened to the public in 1914 at the corner of Bloor Street and what is now Queen's Park, on the edge of the University of Toronto, with which it was closely associated until 1968. Its founding director, Charles Trick Currelly, built the early archaeological collections, and the museum has since grown to hold millions of objects and specimens across art, archaeology and the natural sciences.
The museum's buildings span more than a century. The original Italianate wing facing Philosopher's Walk was designed by Frank Darling and John A. Pearson, and a larger eastern wing by Alfred H. Chapman and James Oxley opened in 1933, with a domed rotunda whose ceiling is covered in glass mosaic. In 2007 the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, designed by Daniel Libeskind, opened on Bloor Street: a cluster of angular, aluminium-clad and glazed volumes that project over the pavement and house galleries and a new entrance.
Galleries cover dinosaurs and fossils, minerals and gems, biodiversity, Canadian and Indigenous history, and the cultures of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The Chinese collections, including a Ming tomb complex and architectural reconstructions, are among the most significant outside China. The OpenROM project, begun in 2024 and due to finish in 2027, is reconfiguring the ground floor as a freely accessible public space with a new Bloor Street entrance, while the museum remains open during construction.
Highlights
- Daniel Libeskind's angular Michael Lee-Chin Crystal on Bloor Street
- Glass-mosaic ceiling in the 1933 Queen's Park rotunda
- Dinosaur galleries with mounted skeletons and fossils
- Major Chinese collections, including a Ming tomb complex
- Free admission on the third Tuesday evening of each month
![[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]title QS:P1476,en:"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"label QS:Len,"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
