London Weekend Break

The Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is open 7 days a week with free admission to everyone. Its exhibits all relate to nature, past and present, and it is massively popular with all age groups.

Located in one of London’s most imposing and impressive buildings, the Waterhouse building, the Natural History Museum is within a very short walk of the Science museum and Albert and Victoria museum, making it very easy to occupy an entire day in this district dedicated to history, science, nature and heritage.

Officially opened in 1881, the Natural History Museum started life as part of the British museum, but by the time of its creation had a speciality in animal and plant species that warranted a dedicated display on its own merit. Despite this, it was not officially recognised as an independent museum until 1963.

Today the museum displays by species and uses a colour zone approach (four zones) to enable its visitors to easily navigate their way through the many exhibits.

More about the Natural History Museum below.

More on the Natural History Museum

Amongst the most popular of these exhibits are those of the dinosaurs, whales and insect species, but the shear number of displays (70 million species) is mind boggling and no ones leaves this museum disappointed.

The museum also holds over three thousand meteorites and nine million fossils.

You enter the museum to be greeted by one of the largest of these fossils, the 26 metre long Diplodocus in the Museum’s Central Hall.

Within the museum you will find some small shops plus cafes, restaurants and sandwich bars. Once in you have no need to leave.

To find out about the new (in September 2009) Charles Darwin centre, see the Darwin Cocoon page.

The nearest tube station is South Kensington.