Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is a very significant historical and scientific centre situated on Exhibition Road, South Kensington in the capital of England, London city.

The museum organisation is under the management of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

First collection was established in Montague House in Bloomsbury in 1756. It belonged to the Ulster doctor Sir Hans Sloane, mainly represented by dried plants, animal and human skeletons.
By the early decades of the nineteenth century a great part of the Sloane’s collection was sold to the Royal College of Surgeons by Sir George Shaw.

Over the years many of the exhibits of the museum failed to persist due to lack of proper maintenance and care.

Increasing number of museum displays led to the necessity of providing more space for their storage. Because of it a land in South Kensington was purchased. The construction of the new museum was entrusted to the Alfred Waterhouse. The building process started in 1873 and took three years to be done. In 1881 the museum was officially opened.

In 1986 the Geological Museum of the British Geological Survey became a part of the Natural History Museum. The Geological Museum was quite famous for its unique displays, including an active volcano model, an earthquake machine and also the world’s first computer-enhanced exhibition Treasures of the Earth.

One of the most valuable projects of the museum is the Darwin Centre. It hosts a collection of tens of millions of preserved specimens, numbers of workspaces for the museum’s scientific staff as well as an educational visitor experiences.

The Natural History Museum has about 70 million displays distributed mainly in five collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaentology and Zoology.

All the museum specimens are held in three galleries, the Red Zone gallery, the Green Zone gallery and the Orange Zone gallery.

The Red Zone gallery includes Earth Lab, Earth’s Treasury, Lasting Impressions, Restless Surface as well as Earth Today and Tomorrow, From the Beginning, The Power Within and Visions of Earth.

The Green Zone gallery is represented by Birds, Creepy Crawlies, Ecology, Fossil Marine Reptiles, Giant Sequoia and Central Hall, Minerals, the Vault, Our Place in Evolution, Plant Power, Primates, Investigate also Dinosaurs, Fishes, Amphibians and Reptiles, Human Biology, Jerwood, Marine Invertebrates, Mammals and Nature Live.

The Orange Zone gallery consists of Wildlife Garden and Darwin Centre.

Address:
Natural History Museum
Cromwell Rd
London
SW7
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 20 7942 5000