Natural History Museum
A cathedral to nature holding some 80 million specimens, from dinosaurs to meteorites.
The Natural History Museum grew out of the British Museum's natural history collections, which outgrew their Bloomsbury home in the 19th century. Championed by the anatomist Richard Owen, the South Kensington building opened in 1881 and today holds tens of millions of specimens spanning zoology, botany, palaeontology, mineralogy and entomology, making it one of the most important scientific collections in the world.
Alfred Waterhouse's Romanesque building is a landmark in its own right, clad in buff and blue terracotta moulded with animals and plants, extinct species on one side and living ones on the other. Visitors enter the cathedral-like Hintze Hall, where a blue whale skeleton hangs from the ceiling, before exploring galleries on dinosaurs, human evolution, the Earth and space. The museum is also a working research institution with hundreds of scientists on site.
Highlights
- Hope, the blue whale skeleton in Hintze Hall
- Dinosaurs gallery
- Terracotta facade and decorated ceilings by Alfred Waterhouse
- Earth Hall and the Wildlife Garden
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