The Natural History Museum - part 1
One of my many stops while rushing through London (you can’t do true justice to seeing all that London has to offer in the 2-odd weeks I was there…) was at the Natural History Museum, via the South Kensington Tube station, on Cromwell Road.
First impressions of the building are very powerful.
It is BIG, really BIG!
And, gothic in look (of course), with lots of intriguing statues lining the walls. Apparently, these (mostly) scarey statues (called gargoyles) are meant to frighten off (keep out) evil spirits with their grotesque looks.
Some of the many gargoyle statues on the Natural History Museum
The building is a large rectangle, rising up about 3 floors, and on each end, it rises up another few floors and ends with a peaked roof. You can see this quite clearly from one of the photos I took.
A side angle photo of the Museum
Entry to the Museum is free (yay!) and the entrances goes up a set of steps to a fairly imposing set of double doors.
The main sign outside the entrance to the Natural History Museum
The quality of the stonework in the entrance is magnificent - with all sorts of cool patterns carved into the pillars and arches.
The magnificent stonework of the Museum entrance
A panoramic view of the entire Natural History Museum, centered on the entrance
When you step inside, you see a long hall, with a set of steps heading up at the other end, and a dinosaur statue in the middle of the room. Down the sides of the room are arches, which contain displays inside each of them.
Inside Entrance View of the Museum
When you look up, the ceiling has many paintings of plant life at the top, and the sides are glass, so plenty of natural light gets into the building to brighten things up.
The plantlife artwork on the roof of the Museum
There are also beautiful lead light glass windows in the vertical windows on the upper levels (and at the ends) which you can see fairly easily, once you step inside the main hall. Not quite Notre Dame quality, but very lovely, none-the-less.
Some of the leadlight windows in the Museum
Well, that’s it for my introduction to the Natural History Museum. I’ll have more in-depth information and photos to come soon. I hope this small start whetted your appetite for more - it’s a fascinating place to visit, that’s for certain.
Tags: charles darwin, dinosaur, gothic, london, museum, natural history museum