London Museums

Take a Stroll Through Museum Row

Excerpt from the book On a Tall Budget and Short Attention Span from the Teresa the Traveler Series.

While wandering around Kensington in search of the nearest train station, I noticed a street lined with museums and dedicated the following day to checking them out. The museums in London house numerous world famous artifacts. For example, the London Museum is home to the famous Rosetta Stone – a slate with carvings in three different languages including Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs announcing the coronation of a King. The stone played a key role in helping archaeologists interpret ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
If I had known this while I was in London I would have visited this museum as well but I had no clue so instead I started day five with a visit to the Natural History Museum followed by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and finally the Science Museum all of which are located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington.

Natural History Museum in London

Natural History Museum
A competition was held to design a new museum in 1864 and by 1883 the museum was complete. The Natural History Museum is famous for its dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture.
There are five main collections, botany (the study of plants),entomology (the study of insects), mineralogy (the study of minerals), paleontology (the study of prehistoric life forms)and zoology (the study of animals). The museum also contains a number of specimens gathered by Charles Darwin and had recently opened the Darwin Center to house the museum’s large collection of preserved specimens.

Victoria and Albert Museum
    With a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects, the Victoria and Albert museum (named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) holds the title of the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design. It’s collection of art, which is housed in 12.5 acres of building with 145 galleries, spans 5000 years.
     The laying of the foundation stone on May 17th 1899 was the last official public appearance by Queen Victoria and it was at this ceremony that the name changed from the South Kensington Museum to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
    One of the main attractions is the Cast Courts – two large two story buildings housing hundreds of plaster casts of sculptures, friezes and tombs including a full-scale replica of Michelangelo’s David. The original David sculpture, completed in 1504, is amongst Michelangelo’s greatest works and one of the most recognizable stone sculptures in the world.
    The Biblical King David was a young Israelite who battled Goliath – champion of the Philistines. It is said that during a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines, twice a day for forty days Goliath came out to the battlefront and challenged the Israelites to send out their strongest soldier so the outcome of the battle could be determined in a single combat.
     The Israelites were all afraid of Goliath with the exception of young David who convinced King Saul to send him up against the mighty warrior. Declining Saul’s offer of body armour, David, who carried only a sling with five stones, managed to hurl a rock into the center of the giant’s forehead. Using his enemy’s own sword, he cut off Goliath’s head and brought it to Jerusalem.
    Saul made David a commander over his armies and offered David his daughter’s hand in marriage. Years later, King Saul and his heir Jonathan were both killed by the Philistines and David was anointed King over Israel and Judah.
    The statue, which is regarded as a symbol of strength and youthful human beauty, came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties in the Florentine Republic. Originally erected in the Piazza della Signoria, it was moved to the Accademia Gallery in Florence for protection in 1873.
    The cast made for the Victoria and Albert Museum once had a detachable plaster fig leaf added for visits by the Queen and other important conservative ladies.

Teresa the Traveler poses with a replica of the Statue of David at the Victoria and Albert Museum

A space diaper on display at the Science Museum in London

An old mail cart on display at the Science Museum

Science Museum
    The Science Museum was founded in 1857 from both the collection of the Royal Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition of 1851. It holds over 300,000 items, including such famous items as Stephenson’s Rocket – an early steam locomotive built in 1829 by Robert Stephenson and Company. Combining technology from other locomotive proto-types, it was the first modern locomotive and the most advanced of its day serving as the template for most steam engines since. It is often referred to as the Stephensonian locomotive.
     On its maiden voyage, the Rocket struck and killed William Huskisson, a member of parliament, making him the first person to be fatally injured in a railway accident.
    Huskisson was attending the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway when the train on which he was riding stopped so the passengers could get off and observe a procession on the parallel track. Unfortunately Huskisson got his pant leg stuck and was hit by the oncoming Rocket.
     The unfortunate man, who was a bit accident prone, had a horse fall on him on during his honeymoon a few years earlier.
     The museum features exhibits such as: Exploring Space (a gallery filled with rockets and exhibits that tell the story of human space exploration), Flight (containing full sized airplanes and helicopters, including a cross section of a Boeing 747) and Making the Modern World (a display chronicling man’s technological achievements which includes an Apollo space capsule).
    The space exhibit answers questions you always wanted to know about space but were afraid to ask like how do astronauts go to the bathroom?  They either wear space diapers or they sit on a toilet that sucks it from their butt.

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Where I Stayed...
Easton Hotel
36-40 Belgrave Road
London, England
Tel: 020 7834 5938
Fax: 020 7976 6560
[email protected]
To book this hotel CLICK HERE

How to Get There - Take the Underground to the South Kensington station and walk to the museums