[3][4] With over half a million objects and artworks in its collections, the displays in the museum explore world history and art from antiquity to the present.

A further large bequest was made to the university in 1912 by Charles Brinsley Marlay, including £80,000 and 84 paintings from his private collection.

A two-storey extension to the south-east, paid for partly by the Courtauld family, was added in 1931, greatly expanding the space of the museum and allowing research teams to work on site.

Among the notable works in the antiquities collection is a bas-relief from Persepolis,[10] and a colossal caryatid from Eleusis known as the Saint Demetra.

[11] There is also the largest collection of 16th-century Elizabethan virginal manuscript music written by some of the most notable composers of the time, such as William Byrd, Doctor John Bull, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tallis.

The Egyptian Galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum reopened in 2006 after a two-year, £1.5 million programme of refurbishment, conservation and research.

They feature an immersive public display which allows families and young visitors to understand the context and landscape of ancient Egyptian through participatory exhibitions.

It also has extensive works by J. M. W. Turner, which has its origins in a set of 25 watercolour drawings donated to the university by John Ruskin in 1861.

Art historian Paul Joannides connected the statues to a drawing in the Musée Fabre by an apprentice of Michelangelo depicting the same subject in the same pose.

[22][23] The burglars were eventually caught and sentenced to a combined 18 years in jail,[23] but several of the most valuable pieces were not recovered and are speculated to have been sold to China.