Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, is one of the world's premier scientific institutions and among its greatest free public museums. The building — designed by Alfred Waterhouse and completed in 1881 in the Romanesque Revival style of decorated terracotta brick with carved reliefs of animals and plants on the facade — is itself one of London's architectural masterpieces. The museum holds 80 million specimens across five collections: zoology, botany, entomology, mineralogy, and palaeontology, spanning the entire history of life on Earth. The entrance hall, Hintze Hall, was redesigned in 2017 when a 25-metre blue whale skeleton named Hope was suspended from the ceiling, replacing the famous diplodocus cast that had greeted visitors for 112 years. Hope dominates the space and is visible from upper balconies as well as the ground floor. The Dinosaur Gallery (Blue Zone, Room 21) is the museum's most popular space, displaying Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the room's end. The Vault within the Green Zone mineral galleries houses the museum's most precious specimens behind glass: the Aurora collection of gem-quality minerals and coloured diamonds, the 21-kilogram Cranbourne meteorite (an iron meteorite from Australia), and the 563-carat Star of India sapphire. The Earth Galleries (Red Zone) feature the centrepiece Kobe earthquake simulator, where visitors stand on a mock supermarket floor that shakes to replicate the 1995 earthquake. The Wildlife Garden in the museum's west grounds is a managed British habitat open from April to October. The annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition exhibition runs from October to June.