Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

In 1851, a spectacular showcase of the world's best art, design and innovation opened in London.

Housed in a magnificent Crystal Palace constructed by Joseph Paxton in just five months,

the great exhibition wowed its six million visitors,

and its legacy still lives on in London's Museum District today.

To find out more about this erie-defining event,

I spoke to Caroline McCaffrey Howarth,

a lecturer in British art history at the University of Edinburgh.

Thanks so much for joining me, Caroline, to talk about the 1851 Great Exhibition.

So before we go any further, for anyone who isn't familiar with it, what was the Great Exhibition? Why was it such a big deal in Victorian

Britain? Yeah, well, I think the key thing to say, first up, is that it wasn't always called

the Great Exhibition. So it was actually originally known as the exhibition of the industry of all nations.

So a slightly less catchy title.

So you can kind of see why they went with great exhibition.

You know, it really kind of adds that sense of grandeur.

And that is really what it was.

So very much in simple terms, the Great Exhibition was an industrial exhibition to showcase art and design with a range

of objects, half of which were coming from Britain and the rest coming from a range of countries

across the globe. It was based in Hyde Park in London. It ran for almost six months in the summer

of 1851 and it involved a huge range of objects from

raw materials to machinery kind of different agricultural manufacturing to art sculpture paintings

ceramics etc and very very quickly it became known as one of these great wonders of the world

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