Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three museums located on Exhibition Road in London (next to the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum). The main façade of the museum is on Cromwell Road.

The museum holds five main collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Zoology and, perhaps the most famous one, Palaeontology. Among the exhibits displayed in the museum, there are dinosaur skeletons, including the 26-metre Diplodocus cast welcoming millions of visitors into the museum's Central Hall each year since 1905. Many of the 70 million items stored in the museum, such as the specimens collected by Darwin, have great historical and scientific value.

The building of the Natural History Museum was designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse. It was constructed between 1873 and 1880. The inauguration of the museum took place in 1881. The building is in a Romanesque Revival architectural style, which is a style belonging to the revivalism. The exterior as well as the interior of the building are mostly covered in a combination of buff and blue-grey terracotta tiles.

The museum also houses a library with numerous books, journals, manuscripts, and artwork collections which can be accessed by appointment only.