Founded in 1683, and part of Oxford University, the Ashmolean claims to be the oldest museum in the UK. Its collection is strictly art -- i.e. you will find no cannon or steam-engines -- but is otherwise wide-ranging, and Victorian pictures occupy just one gallery on the top floor. Nevertheless, the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Hunt, had various associations with Oxford, and so the museum has an excellent collection of early Pre-Raphaelite pictures, including two survivors from the PRB's stormy showing at the RA Summer Exhibition of 1850. The museum steadily rotates what is on view.    The building, on Beaumont Street, is a noticeable edifice with a large Ionic portico (although the visitors' entrance is somewhat more modest). There is in theory local parking: but Oxford traffic is notorious and there is now a barrier that cuts the city centre into North and South halves during the daytime, making everything very awkward.    The signs on main roads into Oxford advise using the Park-and-Ride scheme, although the buses from the car-parks aren't cheap. Arriving by train is perhaps the most satisfactory: the museum is "a ten-minute walk" (Ashmolean's publicity material) from the railway station. Website Map

Works at the Ashmolean by Laurens Alma Tadema Ford Madox Brown Edward Coley Burne-Jones Charles Allston Collins Augustus Egg Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale Frank Holl Arthur Hughes William Holman Hunt Edward Lear Frederic Leighton John Everett Millais John Pettie William Blake Richmond Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys Marie Spartali Stillman