DK Travel : London : Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

5.0 /5 (1 vote)

Rate it

Review this attraction

Are these details incorrect?

There are some 70 million specimens in the Natural History Museum’s fascinating collection. Originally the repository for items brought home by Charles Darwin and Captain Cook’s botanist, Joseph Banks, the museum combines traditional displays with many innovative, hands-on exhibits. With numerous kid-pleasers, such as the impressive dinosaur collection, it remains one of London’s most popular museums. Still a hot-house of research, the museum employs 300 scientists and librarians.
More on London museums

Top 10 Exhibits

1. Gemstones

1. Gemstones

The museum’s extensive collection of gemstones, rocks and minerals includes the brilliant red Rhodochrosite from the USA. The Earth’s Treasury Gallery investigates how quartz keeps time and how carbon becomes diamonds.
2. Earthquake Simulator

2. Earthquake Simulator

The Power Within looks at volcanoes and earthquakes. You can stand in a Japanese supermarket and experience the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
3. Journey Through the Globe

Approach the Earth galleries by an escalator that travels through a giant globe. The model is made of iron, zinc and copper to symbolize the Earth’s composition.
4. No. 1 Crawley House

Perhaps the most hair-raising display is housed in No. 1 Crawley House, a gallery which shows just how many of the 1.3 million known kinds of arthropods, or creepy-crawlies, share our homes.
5. Model Baby

5. Model Baby

A giant model of an unborn baby in the Human Biology galleries explores the sounds we hear in the womb. Other hands-on exhibits test abilities and reactions and show how physical characteristics are inherited.
6. Water Cycle Video Wall

6. Water Cycle Video Wall

A semi-spherical video wall in the Ecology Gallery shows the water cycle and how it links all life on the planet. A walk-through leaf shows how plants make oxygen.
7. Fossils

Marine reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs have survived in some remarkable fossils, such as the pregnant femaleIchthyosaur , found in a Dorset garden, which lived 187–178 million years ago.
8. Darwin Centre

Opened in 2003, this new wing gives visitors access to the priceless specimen collection gathered since 1753 from all corners of the earth. The fascinating Spirit Collection is made up of over 22 million specimens preserved in 450,000 jars.
9. Dinosaurs

9. Dinosaurs

Deinonychus , one of the museums impressively life-like animatronic models, lurches and roars in this hugely popular gallery. More traditional exhibits of fossilized skeletons and eggs are also on display.
10. Borehole

A 150-m (490-ft) borehole drilled beneath the museum reveals its fascinating contents in the Earth galleries, where fossil fuels and renewable energy sources are explored.

Practical Information

Try the Life galleries Restaurant, or the other two cafés and snack bar. A number of different tours are available, including a visit to the outdoor Wildlife Garden. Details at the Life galleries information desk. Cromwell Road SW7 020 7942 5000 www.nhm.ac.uk Open10am–5:50pm Mon–Sat, 11am–5:50pm Sun. Last admission 5:30pm Free