Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
If you're looking for peace and quiet, head next door for the exquisite scientific
instruments, chiefly created by George Adams for George III, in
Science in the
Eighteenth Century
. Close by,
Health Matters
dwells thoughtfully on modern medical
history from the introduction of mass vaccination to the challenge of finding a cure
for HIV.
Heading towards the Wellcome Wing, you eventually reach the giant hangar of
Flight
, festooned with aircraft of every description from a Spitfire to a modern
executive jet. Look out for the scaled-down model of the Montgolfier balloon which
recorded the first human flight in 1783, and the full-size model of the flimsy
contraption in which the Wright brothers made their epoch-making power-assisted
flight in 1903.
18
Floors 4 and 5
If old-fashioned displays are more your thing, head for
Glimpses of Medical History
on
Floor 4. The exhibition features an attractive series of dioramas of medical operations,
and larger mock-ups of surgeries and dentists' and chemists' premises through the ages,
starting with Neolithic trepanning and finishing up with the gore-free spectacle of an
open-heart operation c.1980.
Even more fascinating (but equally old-fashioned) is Wellcome's
Science and Art of
Medicine
gallery on Floor 5. Using an anthropological approach, this is a visual and
cerebral feast, galloping through ancient medicine, medieval and Renaissance
pharmacy, alchemy, quack doctors, royal healers, astrology and military surgery.
Offbeat artefacts include African fetish objects, an Egyptian mummy, numerous masks,
an eighteenth-century Florentine model of a female torso giving birth and George
Washington's dentures.
Natural History Museum
Cromwell Rd • Daily 10am-5.50pm • Free •
T
020 7942 5000,
W
nhm.ac.uk •
!
South Kensington
Alfred Waterhouse's purpose-built mock-Romanesque colossus, with its 675ft
terracotta facade built in 1880, ensures the status of the
Natural History Museum
as
London's most handsome museum. Its vast collections derive from a bequest by Hans
Sloane to the British Museum, separated off in the 1860s after a huge power struggle.
The founding director, Richard Owen, was an amazing figure, who arranged
expeditions around the globe to provide everything from butterflies to dinosaurs for
the museum's cabinets.
Nowadays, the museum copes manfully with the task of remaining an important
resource for serious zoologists, and a major tourist attraction for the families with kids
who flock here to check out the dinosaur collection. The
Central Hall
is dominated by
“Dippy”, a replica
Diplodocus
skeleton, 85ft from tip to tail, while the “side chapels”
are filled with “wonders” of the natural world - a model of a sabre-toothed tiger, a
stuffed Great Bustard, a dodo skeleton and so on. It's also worth pausing here to take in
the architecture of this vast “nave”, whose walls are decorated with moulded terracotta
animals and plants.
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Arrival
If the queues are long for the main entrance, you're
better off heading for the Red Zone's side entrance on
Exhibition Rd. The museum is divided into four colour-
coded zones, but all you really need to know is that the Red
Zone is the old Geology Museum linked to the rest of the
museum by the Birds section, and the Orange Zone is the
Darwin Centre.
Exhibitions and tours
As well as large, very popular
special exhibitions (for which there's a charge), the
museum also puts on lots of free tours, talks, discussions,
workshops and performances, and in the winter there's an
ice rink in front of the building.
Eating
There's a café behind the stairs in the Central Hall,
and in the Red Zone and a picnic area in the basement, or
you can head out to the Wildlife Garden (April-Oct), west
of the entrance.
