British Museum in Camden

You're standing at the British Museum, on Great Russell Street in London's Bloomsbury. Take a look at that front. A long row of forty-three columns, each about fourteen metres tall, just like a Greek temple. That's exactly the idea: architect Robert Smirke modelled them on the columns of a Greek temple to Athena. Above the entrance is a triangular pediment with fifteen figures. Together they tell the story of the progress of civilisation. They've been up there since 1852.