Description
The Natural History Museum in South Kensington is London's museum of the natural world: some 80 million specimens, from dinosaur skeletons to meteorites, in a Victorian building so grand it is a sight in itself. Entry to the permanent galleries is free.
Start outside. Alfred Waterhouse designed a Romanesque "cathedral of nature", opened in 1881 and covered in terracotta tiles that could stand up to the Victorian soot. Animals and plants are sculpted all over it: living species on the west wing, extinct ones on the east.
That split was the idea of Richard Owen, the palaeontologist who wanted a museum for everyone. Its collections began with the cabinet of Sir Hans Sloane and lived for a century in the British Museum, before moving here.
Inside, Hintze Hall is the great hall. A skeleton of a blue whale named Hope, 25 meters long, dives from its ceiling. For 112 years the hall belonged to Dippy, a cast of a Diplodocus, before Hope took over in 2017.
The Dinosaurs gallery is the favorite of children, with a Triceratops skull, a Baryonyx and an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex. The museum also has the most complete Stegosaurus skeleton ever found, nicknamed Sophie, and the first Archaeopteryx ever discovered, generally accepted as the oldest known bird.
In the Earth galleries, the Vault shows gemstones and meteorites, such as the Duke of Devonshire Emerald. The Mammals gallery has a life-size blue whale model, built in 1938. Look also for the dodo skeleton and the cross-section of a giant sequoia 1,300 years old.
The galleries are color-coded in four zones: red for the Earth, green for birds, insects and fossils, blue for dinosaurs and mammals, and orange for the wildlife garden and the Darwin Centre. The Darwin Centre keeps the spirit collection, including Archie, a giant squid of 8.62 meters caught near the Falkland Islands in 2004.
The museum has its own stories. In 1862 the British Museum hired an insect expert who could not tell a butterfly from a moth: he was the nephew of a trustee's mistress. The collections were a mess back then, and of the 5,500 insects in Sloane's catalogue, by 1833 not one was left.
Don't miss
• Hope the blue whale.
• The Dinosaurs gallery.
• The Vault.
• The first Archaeopteryx.
• The terracotta facade.
Did you know?
• The workmen who built the whale model left a trapdoor in its stomach for secret cigarette breaks.
• A possibly new insect species was found in the museum's wildlife garden in 2007.
• With over 7.1 million visitors in 2025, it was the most visited attraction in the UK.
Start outside. Alfred Waterhouse designed a Romanesque "cathedral of nature", opened in 1881 and covered in terracotta tiles that could stand up to the Victorian soot. Animals and plants are sculpted all over it: living species on the west wing, extinct ones on the east.
That split was the idea of Richard Owen, the palaeontologist who wanted a museum for everyone. Its collections began with the cabinet of Sir Hans Sloane and lived for a century in the British Museum, before moving here.
Inside, Hintze Hall is the great hall. A skeleton of a blue whale named Hope, 25 meters long, dives from its ceiling. For 112 years the hall belonged to Dippy, a cast of a Diplodocus, before Hope took over in 2017.
The Dinosaurs gallery is the favorite of children, with a Triceratops skull, a Baryonyx and an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex. The museum also has the most complete Stegosaurus skeleton ever found, nicknamed Sophie, and the first Archaeopteryx ever discovered, generally accepted as the oldest known bird.
In the Earth galleries, the Vault shows gemstones and meteorites, such as the Duke of Devonshire Emerald. The Mammals gallery has a life-size blue whale model, built in 1938. Look also for the dodo skeleton and the cross-section of a giant sequoia 1,300 years old.
The galleries are color-coded in four zones: red for the Earth, green for birds, insects and fossils, blue for dinosaurs and mammals, and orange for the wildlife garden and the Darwin Centre. The Darwin Centre keeps the spirit collection, including Archie, a giant squid of 8.62 meters caught near the Falkland Islands in 2004.
The museum has its own stories. In 1862 the British Museum hired an insect expert who could not tell a butterfly from a moth: he was the nephew of a trustee's mistress. The collections were a mess back then, and of the 5,500 insects in Sloane's catalogue, by 1833 not one was left.
Don't miss
• Hope the blue whale.
• The Dinosaurs gallery.
• The Vault.
• The first Archaeopteryx.
• The terracotta facade.
Did you know?
• The workmen who built the whale model left a trapdoor in its stomach for secret cigarette breaks.
• A possibly new insect species was found in the museum's wildlife garden in 2007.
• With over 7.1 million visitors in 2025, it was the most visited attraction in the UK.