Hidden treasures

Start your visit by soaking up the tranquillity of our Nature Discovery Garden. Take your time, there are many nooks and crannies to uncover in this beautiful space. See how many different creatures you can spot from our sunken path between our ponds.

Getting there: Enter through our West Gate on Queen’s Gate.

Enter our building through our West Entrance and be intrigued by all the jars in the impressive spirit collection we care for. With 23 million specimens preserved in spirit, there’s so much to see, including the head of a giraffe, a lesser vampire bat and even a chewed-up squid recovered from a whale’s stomach. Want to see more? Buy a ticket for our Behind the Scenes Spirit Collection Tour online or at our information desks.

Opposite our Zoology Spirit Building, you’ll find our new mixed reality experience Visions of Nature. Find out more about Visions of Nature and book a ticket.

Getting there: Enter our building through our West Entrance into the Lower Ground Floor of our Darwin Centre Atrium. Turn left and continue to the far end of the atrium then take the stairs or the lift up to the Ground Floor. Turn left into our Zoology Spirit Building and our displays will be on your right.

Cast your gaze upon beautiful botanical drawings and stunning photographs of the natural world in one of our quieter galleries. Did you know we have more than 500,000 natural history artworks in the collections we care for? Art has always been an important tool for scientific discovery and this gallery perfectly demonstrates why. Here you can inspect our replica of Sir William Smith’s geological map of Britain and see what the inside of a hammerhead shark’s head looks like on a micro-CT scan.

Getting there: Exit our Zoology Spirit Building, passing the Attenborough Studio and the Climate Change wall. Turn the corner and enter the first door on the right to reach the Images of Nature Gallery.

Home to some of the most important items in the collections we care for, our Treasures Gallery is an absolute must-see. In here you’ll find the first edition of Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species, which we have in several languages. Every so often, we swap out which version we put on display, so it’s worth popping in each time you visit us to see one in a different language.

Getting there: Head through our Images of Nature Gallery, exit at the far end and turn left. Keep going along the corridor until you reach Hintze Hall, then head up to the First Floor by taking the stairs or the lift. There’s an entrance to our Treasures Gallery on either side of the staircase.

Easily missed among all our other galleries, our Fossils from Britain display case is a riveting insight into life on Earth millions of years ago and is arranged according to the different geological eras.

Getting there: Head back down to the Ground Floor of Hintze Hall and go into our Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery. On the right, you’ll find our Fossils from Britain display case.

If you want to be inspired by beautiful nature photographs from around the world, book tickets to see our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. Taken by the world’s best wildlife photographers, there’s new photographs to see every year between October and June.

Note: You can buy tickets at the entrance to the exhibition subject to availability or book online in advance.

Getting there: Go to the end of our Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery and the entrance to the exhibition will be on your right.

Be amazed by all the processes that have helped create some of the most fascinating fossils in history in our Lasting Impressions Gallery. Admire the beauty of a gogotte, which is like a solidified sandstone sculpture, and check out our petrified tree stump.

Getting there: If you chose not to go into our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, then head through the door on the left at the end of our Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery into our Birds Gallery. Carry on to the end of our Birds Gallery and then go through the doors on the right-hand side.

If you chose to go into our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, you’ll exit into our main gift shop. From there, go through the door on the right side of the shop that leads into a corridor – this leads you back into our Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery. Turn right and pass through the gallery again but when you get to the end head through the doors on the left into our Birds Gallery. Carry on to the end of our Birds Gallery and then go through the doors on the right-hand side.

In our Red Zone you’ll find our Human Evolution Gallery. Discover how our species evolved and trace the evolution of humans through time. The famous Cheddar Man skeleton is a highlight of this gallery as well as a Laetoli canine that’s more than 3.5 million years old.

Getting there: Leave our Lasting Impressions Gallery, pass through the Earth Hall and past Sophie the Stegosaurus. On your right you’ll find our Human Evolution Gallery.

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Round up your family and take a  tour  to see some of our biggest sights⁠ including dinosaurs, whales and volcanoes.

From free activities for families and kids, to silent discos beneath our iconic blue whale, there is always something going on in South Kensington.

Uncover some of the Museum’s most fascinating stories with this tour aimed at adults and solo travellers.