The Royal Ontario Museum was formally established in 1912 jointly by the Government of Ontario and the University of Toronto and officially opened to the public in 1914. The museum’s location at the edge of Toronto’s developed city centre, far from the city’s business district, was selected mainly for its proximity to the University’s St. George campus. The original building was constructed on the western edge of the property along the university’s Philosopher’s Walk, with its main entrance facing out onto Bloor Street, housing five separate museums in the fields of Archaeology, Palaeontology, Mineralogy, Zoology, and Geology. Today, ROM is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive museum and is home to an expansive collection of 18 million artworks, cultural objects, and natural history specimens.
