South Kensington

The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.

The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a cathedral of nature—both exemplified by the large Diplodocus cast that dominated the vaulted central hall before it was replaced in 2017 with the skeleton of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. The Natural History Museum Library contains an extensive collection of books, journals, manuscripts, and artwork linked to the work and research of the scientific departments; access to the library is by appointment only. The museum is recognised as the pre-eminent centre of natural history and research of related fields in the world.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (/wʊlf/; née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.

Virginia Woolf was born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family as the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen. She grew up in a blended household of eight children, including her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Educated at home in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf later attended King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and encountered early advocates for women’s rights and education.

Exhibition Road is a street in South Kensington, London which is home to several major museums and academic establishments, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.

The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019.

Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission, although visitors are requested to make a donation if they are able. Temporary exhibitions may incur an admission fee.

A pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall (officially Hintze Hall since 2014) and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, were unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Painted directly onto the plaster of the ceilings, they also make use of gilding for visual effect.

The natural history collections had originally shared a building with their parent institution the British Museum, but with the expansion of the British Empire there was a significant increase in both public and commercial interest in natural history, and in the number of specimens added to the museum's natural history collections. In 1860 it was agreed that a separate museum of natural history would be created in a large building, capable of displaying the largest specimens, such as whales. The superintendent of the natural history departments, Richard Owen, envisaged that visitors would enter a large central hall containing what he termed an "index collection" of representative exhibits, from which other galleries would radiate, and a smaller hall to the north would display the natural history of the British Isles. Waterhouse's Romanesque design for the museum included decorative painted ceilings. Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, refused to permit the decoration of the ceilings on grounds of cost, but Waterhouse convinced him that provided the painting took place while the scaffolding from the museum's construction was still in place it would incur no extra cost; he further managed to convince Ayrton that the ceiling would be more appealing if elements of the paintings were gilded.

The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offers postgraduate degrees in art and design to students from over 60 countries.

George Dennis CMG (21 July 1814 in Ash Grove, Hackney, Middlesex – 15 November 1898 in South Kensington, London) was a British explorer of Etruria; his written account and drawings of the ancient places and monuments of the Etruscan civilization combined with his summary of the ancient sources is among the first of the modern era and remains an indispensable reference in Etruscan studies.

Camilla (born Camilla Rosemary Shand, later Parker Bowles, 17 July 1947) is Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms as the wife of King Charles III.

Camilla was raised in East Sussex and South Kensington in England and educated in England, Switzerland and France. In 1973, she married British Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles; they divorced in 1995. Camilla and Charles were romantically involved periodically, both before and during each of their first marriages. Their relationship was highly publicised in the media and attracted worldwide scrutiny. In 2005, Camilla married Charles in the Windsor Guildhall, which was followed by a televised Anglican blessing at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. From their marriage until Charles's accession, she was known as the Duchess of Cornwall. On 8 September 2022, Charles became king upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, with Camilla as queen consort. Charles and Camilla's coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 6 May 2023.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (often known by its initialism as RBKC) is an Inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the United Kingdom. It includes affluent areas such as Notting Hill, Kensington, South Kensington, Chelsea, and Knightsbridge.

The borough is immediately west of the City of Westminster, east of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, south of the London Borough of Brent and north of the London Borough of Wandsworth across the River Thames. It contains major museums and universities in South Kensington, department stores such as Harrods, Peter Jones and Harvey Nichols, and embassies in Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Kensington Gardens. The borough is home to the Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's largest, and contains many of the most expensive residential properties in the world, as well as Kensington Palace, a British royal residence.