THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM: ART, MYTH, AND IMAGINATION
Directions
From The Randolph Hotel, turn left onto Beaumont Street — you’ll see the grand columns of the Ashmolean Museum almost immediately on your right.
It’s less than a minute’s walk. The museum entrance is marked by stone lions, wide steps, and banners advertising its current exhibitions.
Admission is free, and visitors are encouraged to step inside and explore the galleries — from ancient Egypt to Renaissance paintings.
Orientation cue: The Ashmolean stands directly opposite the Playhouse Theatre and next door to the Randolph Hotel — impossible to miss.
About
Founded in 1683, the Ashmolean Museum is the oldest public museum in Britain and one of the oldest in the world.
Its vast collection of art, archaeology, and antiquities was exactly the kind of place that stirred Lewis’s imagination.
Though not recorded as a regular visitor, Lewis frequently referred to art and mythological imagery in his writings, drawing on the same well of human creativity that the Ashmolean celebrates.
He believed that myths were not lies, but “a way of seeing truth through story,” and that beauty itself was a signpost pointing beyond the material world.
The museum’s treasures — Greek sculptures, medieval icons, and Renaissance paintings — echo the great themes of his thought: longing (sehnsucht), divine reflection in art, and the timeless human desire to tell stories about meaning.
For modern visitors, the Ashmolean stands as a symbol of the same truth Lewis cherished — that the imagination is not a luxury, but a way of discovering reality.
As he once wrote:
“Reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
Here, surrounded by centuries of artistic witness, those words come vividly to life.
