Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum opened on Cromwell Road in 1881, purpose-built to house the natural history collections previously kept at the British Museum, and was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in a Romanesque Revival style with terracotta cladding depicting living and extinct species across its facade. The central Hintze Hall, formerly dominated by the diplodocus cast nicknamed 'Dippy,' now displays the skeleton of a blue whale nicknamed 'Hope' suspended from the ceiling since 2017. The museum's roughly 80 million specimens include Charles Darwin's own collections and a first edition of On the Origin of Species, and the Darwin Centre's Cocoon, a seven-storey egg-shaped structure completed in 2009, houses the museum's insect and plant research collections behind glass walls visible to visitors. The dinosaur gallery, one of the most visited sections, includes an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex and a Diplodocus skeleton cast, while the Vault displays gemstones including a moon rock sample and the Aurora Pyramid of Hope collection of coloured diamonds. Galleries are organised thematically across the Blue, Green, Red, and Orange zones, covering dinosaurs, mammals, human biology, and earth sciences respectively. The building itself, one of London's most significant examples of Victorian architecture, underwent restoration of its terracotta facade in the 2000s, and the museum's Wildlife Garden and Nature Discovery Garden, opened in 2024, extend the natural history theme outdoors.