The Ashmolean Museum, the oldest public Museum in Britain, houses the University of Oxford's unrivalled collection of art and antiquities from Europe, Central Asia and the Far East. Three centuries and more of unbroken history render the Ashmolean one of the most venerable institutions of its kind in the world. When, in 1683, Elias Ashmole endowed the University of Oxford with the already famous Tradescant collection, many of the exhibits had already been on public display for 50 years, extending the origins of the collection to the very threshold of the Stuart era.