The Natural History Museum

This is one of my most favourite buildings in London- The Natural History Museum. It is in the area of South Kensington and is next door to The Science Museum and across the road you will find The Victoria and Albert Museum. There is no entry fee to our public museums making them very popular with tourists. The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, a young architect from Liverpool who won the contract after the original architect died. It was opened to the public on Easter Monday 1881.

 At the entrance to the Museum you can see these wonderful rounded arches which were inspired by the basalt columns at Fingal's Cave in Scotland.

The outside of the Museum is decorated with many statues, gargoyles and reliefs. Extinct animals are represented on the East side and living animals on the West. Waterhouse sketched them himself before they were cast in terracotta.

Even the columns are decorated with patterns found on fossil trees.

 These animals are at the base of the columns 

Throughout the Museum you can find examples of his artistic work. This is a vent cover.

Once inside you enter the magnificent central  hall. This was part of the vision of the  Museum's founder,Richard Owen. He wanted a museum large enough to display large mammals such as whales and elephants, as well as extinct animals such as dinosaurs. A cast of a diplodocus has stood in the central hall for the last 100 years.

Waterhouse's wonderful 'flying staircase' is an impressive bridge staircase spanning the CentralHall

The latest addition to the museum is the Darwin Centre which opened in 2009. Inside the centre is  the cocoon which houses more than 20 million specimens from around the world ranging from tiny insects to the giant redwood trees. The oldest collections go back 400 years. They have been gathered by naturalists and explorers such as Hans Sloane and Charles Darwin. But there are also specimens from unknown people such as government officials or ship's doctors. They represent a unique piece of world heritage and are still used today by scientists for research purposes.

The 8 storey cocoon is the largest sprayed cocrete
 curved structure in Europe. It has 30 steel columns which are each 28metres long. They are the longest columns ever transported through London. 

As a visitor you can wander through the cocoon, looking at examples of the collections, watch videos of the research being carried out by the scientists. There are also specific times when there are some of the scientists on hand to answer questions.