Victoria & Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and Science Museum
Location Details
Address: Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England, United Kingdom
Coordinates: A,6 - 4 (W)
Owner: City of London
Type: Entertainment - Museums
Wealth:

Descriptions

This entire city block has been devoted to museums. Many of the structures were built during the Victorian era, at the height of the British Empire, and their grandiose granite towers and belfries reflects that. The concrete pavement is crowded with passersby, and is rarely visible to the son, so overshadowed is it by the buildings which represent the bulk of British Imperialism and glory. Looking in any direction, one can see great domes, almost the rival of Saint Paul's Cathedral.

V%2BA_Museum_Exterior.jpg

Victoria & Albert Museum

Exterior

The Victoria and Albert Museum looks almost more like a church than a museum, from the outside. The stonework around the entrance and around each of its many, many windows is carved in detailed stonework. Rising high above the entrance is a tall tower, decorated in pillars and tipped with the shape of the Imperial Crown.

V%2BA_Museum_Interior.jpg

Interior

Art is the core of the Victoria and Albert museum, and it's visible in every wall, every doorway, and every balcony. Not only are great works of art on display all throughout the museum, works from paintings and sculptures to fashion and ceramics and miniaturized display of fantastic architecture, but even the walls are decorated with carvings and mosaics. Literally millions of artworks are on display through the vast halls of the museum, including over 750,000 books all focused on the study of fine art.

Employees

NoImageNoImage
separator.gif

Natural History Museum

Natural_History_Museum_Exterior.jpg
Natural_History_Museum_Interior.jpg

Exterior

Gothic-revival architecture stretches for hundreds of meters in either direction, gray granite capped by huge domes of blue slate and steel. The Natural History Museum is gargantuan, a dinosaur in itself. Directly above the main entrance are two huge belfries that look as though they might belong, instead, upon Westminster Abbey. The entryway resembles a fortified gatehouse, and atop it flies the Union Jack, proud symbol of the British Empire. A long stretch of grass surrounds the building, in itself an unusual find in urban London. The once-pristine granite shows signs of stain now, from the lingering London Fogs, but it is still an impressive sight.

Interior

If the outside of the Natural History Museum was impressive, its interior is positively grandiose. Great arches hold up a ceiling that is alternately windowed and tiled, allowing in natural light on even the gloomiest day and casting the entire building in a golden glow. Everything within this cavernous space has been carved in the Gothic Revival style, from the huge staircases that bookend the main room to the walls of the various exhibit halls, with their extraordinary buttresses rising right up to the ceiling. Vast banners hang down in places, advertising for visiting exhibits from other prestigious museums. And in the center of the space stretches a long, fully-restored, skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The skeleton dominates the space, looming over the visitors to the Museum as though to remind them of where they have come — a place dedicated to the splendors of the natural world.

Employees

NoImageNoImage
separator.gif

Science Museum

Science_Museum_Exterior.jpg
Science_Museum_Interior.jpg

Exterior

This building is a monument to modern engineering — straightforward and bluff, it rises up in a single rectangular edifice. Crisp squares of windows line the walls in orderly rows, rising up like dark mirrors to reflect the streets around them. The building's first floor is the only place in which any sort of embellishment has been allowed, a narrow trim of shaped concrete in several horizontal rows. Above, there is a casual nod toward the Ionic columnature of Greece, but the flourishes are so subdued as to hardly be present at all. A false balcony rail runs along the roof, shaped from concrete, the final nod toward aesthetics over practicality. The point is made in hammer-fisted, brutal, fashion — this is a building of science.

Interior

Though the outside of the building implies a certain lack of whimsy, it is the interior that truly drives the point home. The main area of the Science Museum has been turned into a gargantuan hangar. Gleaming white pain reflects off of many surfaces, and the displays are shown so openly and without artifice that it is, in some astounding way, rather artistic, creating a sense of vast spaces. A cutting-edge Spitfire, no doubt needed in the war effort, is suspended from the ceiling by use of clever support struts, canted slightly to the left, as though it were participating in an aerial dogfight. And just below it is a steam-powered train, that marvel of modern engineering. Other floors seem to be just as open and avant-garde, all opening onto a balcony view of the central space. Dozens of exhibits, displays of modern engineering, and even futurist predictions, occupy smaller galleries branching off from the central area.

Employees

NoImageNoImage
separator.gif

Gallery


Back to: Directory or South Kensington

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License