As an institution, the Cyprus Museum was founded in 1882 during the British occupation of the island following a petition by the Cypriot people. This makes the museum 139 years old. The petition was delivered to the British administration by a delegation headed by the religious leaders of both the Christian and Muslim populations.[1] A major catapult for this action were several illicit excavations and the smuggling of antiquities off the island. The most extensive of these had been carried out a few years earlier by the United States Ambassador, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who had smuggled over 35,000 artefacts off the island, most of which were destroyed in transit. Many of the surviving items ended up in the newly formed Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and are currently on display in their own galleries on the second floor.[2]

The initial museum was funded by private donations and was temporarily housed in existing governmental offices. It moved to its own premises in 1889 on Victoria Street within the medieval walls of the city. Construction of the current building began in 1908 and was completed in 1924.[3] It was originally dedicated to the memory of the British monarch, Queen Victoria. It was designed by the architect N. Balanos of the Archaeological Society of Athens and construction was supervised by George H. Everett Jeffery then curator of the museum.[4] In 1961 a second set of galleries, storerooms and offices was completed. It published the Cyprus Museum Annual Report.[5]