Museums in the Ancient Mediterranean

The idea of gathering and displaying objects wasn’t unique to Mesopotamia. In the Greek and Roman worlds, temples often doubled as repositories of offerings, art, and plundered treasures. Sculptures also decorated public gardens, forums, and bathhouses.

The Museum of Alexandria, founded in the third century BCE, was another important milestone in the history of museums. Despite its name, this mouseion — literally a shrine to the Muses — resembled more of a research institute than a gallery. Attached to the famous Library of Alexandria, it housed scholars, lecture halls, and dining rooms rather than artifacts. Still, the institution’s prestige meant that later Europeans revived the word “museum” to describe their own collections.

Curiosity Cabinets

After Ennigaldi’s experiment, it took nearly 2,000 years before anything resembling a museum emerged in Europe. During the Renaissance, wealthy European nobles, merchants, and scholars began assembling “cabinets of curiosity” or “wonder rooms.” These eclectic collections brought together fossils, coins, artworks, scientific instruments, and exotic artifacts from voyages abroad.

The goal was encyclopedic: to contain the world’s marvels in miniature. Visitors might marvel at a stuffed dodo, a mummy’s hand, or a carved gem, all jumbled together without concern for taxonomy. John Tradescant, a gardener to English royalty, famously opened his home and garden in South London to display such a collection, later catalogued and published as the Musaeum Tradescantianum.

These cabinets were largely private, their accessibility subject to the whim of the owner. Yet they laid the foundation for the idea that collections could be displayed for education as well as prestige.

The Birth of the Public Museum

The leap from private collections to public institutions occurred from the 15th through 18th centuries. A turning point came in 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated ancient bronze sculptures to the people of Rome. This gift formed the nucleus of the Capitoline Museums, which officially opened in 1734 and are often considered the first truly public art museums.

Another watershed was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Built to house the collections of the wealthy antiquary Elias Ashmole and the Tradescant family, it opened its doors in 1683 and is frequently cited as the first modern museum. Its displays included antiquities, coins, zoological specimens, and the (now-lost) body of the last dodo seen in Europe.

By the mid-18th century, museums were firmly established. The British Museum, founded in 1753 from the collection of Irish physician and naturalist Hans Sloane, institutionalized the model: publicly accessible repositories dedicated to collecting, preserving, and classifying the world’s knowledge. The Louvre, transformed into a national museum during the French Revolution in 1793, underscored the museum’s political as well as cultural significance.

The First Museum

So, what was the first museum? The answer depends on how you define “museum.” If we mean the first known collection curated for historical interest and accompanied by labels, the title belongs to Princess Ennigaldi’s collection in Ur. If we mean the first public institution designed to grant ordinary people access to cultural treasures, the Capitoline Museums of Rome claim the honor. And if we mean the first modern museum in the European sense — systematic, educational, and encyclopedic — the Ashmolean in Oxford stands out.

Each reflects a different stage in humanity’s enduring desire to preserve the past and make meaning from material culture. The museum has never been a single invention, but rather a recurring impulse across time: the need to gather objects, organize them, and invite others to see what stories they tell. In that sense, the first museum may not be a place at all, but an idea that keeps resurfacing whenever people try to make sense of history through things.

Intercom Systems

They may seem quaint now compared to sophisticated smart home systems, but there was a time when built-in intercoms were a handy home tool. As postwar suburban homes grew bigger in the 1950s and ’60s, families could use them to communicate with each other from different parts of the house. A voice from the kitchen would announce dinner, remind someone to take out the trash, or check who was home — all without anyone leaving their room.

Intercoms such as the ones made by NuTone were primarily fixtures of upscale homes. They were marketed as a luxury convenience that could also broadcast AM and FM radio throughout the house. But the novelty of intercoms didn’t last long, and by the 1980s, some major intercom manufacturers such as GE had ceased making them. 

Milk Doors

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a little door on the side of the house was a common sight for many American families, but it wasn’t for letters or for a pet to scurry in and out. These built-in compartments, which usually had two doors, one on the outside and one on the inside of the compartment, were for milk. This was during an era when milkmen delivered glass bottles of fresh milk to the home. The milk doors were a receptacle for new bottles, and a place for families to return empty ones and leave the milkman’s payment. 

Milk delivery continued for decades throughout the U.S. But by the 1960s and ’70s, it was competing with a new reality. Suburban sprawl made delivery routes longer and more costly, supermarkets offered cheaper one-stop shopping, and refrigerators became standard in nearly every home. Daily milk delivery was no longer needed, and remaining milk doors became little more than a symbolic portal to the past.

Razor Blade Disposals

Perhaps one of the strangest bygone house features is the built-in razor-blade disposal. Prior to the early 20th century, men would need to visit the barber for a fresh shave, since doing so at home was considered too risky. But thanks to the invention of the safety razor in 1904, at-home shaving became the norm. While this was a major leap forward in convenience, the disposable razor blades were a nuisance when it came time to throw them out. Too sharp (and potentially contaminated) for the regular trash, they were instead placed into the wall. 

That’s right — small openings were incorporated into the back of medicine cabinets or in the walls above sinks. Once the blades went in, they didn’t come out. They often stayed inside the walls, accumulating until someone decided to renovate somewhere down the line. By the mid-1970s, fully disposable razors with the blade built right in became popular, and these strange little slots went out of style.

Popcorn Ceilings

Love them or hate them, popcorn ceilings were once everywhere. The infamous finish first became popular in the 1950s, when postwar homes were being built quickly and cheaply to accommodate booming populations. Construction crews appreciated the ease and affordability of the ceiling style, since it doesn’t require sanding or finishing multiple layers, and homeowners liked that it hid imperfections and even provided some minor soundproofing.

Popcorn ceilings were the norm for almost 30 years — and you may even have some in your own home today — but you likely won’t see them in homes built after 1980. A major reason? The material itself. Early formulations of the spray-on mixture often contained asbestos, naturally occurring minerals that, when disturbed, can lead to serious health risks. As maligned as their reputation may be, though, anyone who grew up under popcorn ceilings still probably has a soft spot for them — right along with shag carpets and avocado-green kitchen appliances.

Phone Nooks

Before cellphones and even cordless home phones, the household telephone typically stayed in one spot. In the early 20th century, to make room for this emerging technology, homes were sometimes built with a dedicated phone nook (also called a phone niche). These small, recessed wall spaces were usually found in a hallway or near the stairs. They often had a compact shelf for a heavy rotary phone and space for a small seat to tuck underneath. 

If the house wasn’t built with a phone nook, cabinets could be ordered from catalogs such as Sears and installed anywhere homeowners desired. But as phones became smaller, lighter, and eventually mobile, there was no longer a need to anchor them to a single place. Today, phone nooks that remain are often used as storage for items such as mail, keys, tchotchkes, and houseplants.

Fold-Out Ironing Boards

Ironing was once a more frequent chore for many households, so having a simple setup was helpful. Enter the fold-out ironing board: a shallow, built-in cabinet, often in the kitchen, that concealed a board that could be pulled down when needed. This space-saving design choice was common in 1920s homes, along with Murphy beds and phone nooks. 

Of course, ironing boards still exist, but over time many fabrics became easier to launder and wear without wrinkling, and everyday clothing became less formal. As a result, the need for these built-in boards declined. Today, you might find that existing relics of fold-out ironing board cupboards make better spice racks, but they are nonetheless a reminder of the changing domestic habits that keep households evolving.