Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
VO: With more than 300 million visitors each year the natural history museum is one of London’s most popular attractions and it’s little wonder when you consider that it’s home to the world’s finest collection of natural history artefacts.
Robert How, Director
The building itself is an incredible example of Victorian fantasy building in a sense. When people walk through the doors of that main hall they think they’re walking in to a cathedral and it’s very much a cathedral to nature.
Robert How, Director
This was purpose built as a natural history museum. When you look around you see these amazing carvings representing the natural world. From animals to monkeys climbing around the archways.
VO: The museum is best known for its vast collection of dinosaurs and for many years the centrepiece was Dippy, a 26 foot long Diplodocus residing in the main hall. These days however the museum is also home to some rather more fierce creatures
Robert How, Director
The first thing people normally ask is ‘where’s the T-Rex?’, ‘where’s the T-Rex?’, so you can imagine that’s one of the most popular things we have on display in the museum. It’s been built so that when people move around that gallery it can identify colours and it sort of follows that colour and people get that eerie feeling that the dinosaur is actually following them.
Robert How, Director
The museum is more than a museum of stuffed animals. There are lots of hands on opportunities throughout the museum. Within human biology we have lots of interactives there and also don’t forget the earth lab where you can actually bring your own rock or mineral to be looked at by a scientist.
VO: As well as the popular gallery exhibitions visitors also get a chance to go behind the scenes and see the hidden specimens at the recently built Darwin centre.
Robert How, Director
Even though we have 78 million objects in the museum, they’re scattered throughout the museum. However what we’re really trying to do is bring the visitors to the collections and a prime example of that and where I feel we’re really succeeding is within the Darwin centre and in the Darwin centre we have over 20 million objects that the public can see on organised tours.
Robert How, Director
In the Darwin centres I would say that may favourite specimen is the giant squid. We’ve just newly installed it in the Darwin centre and what a sight that is.
VO: With so many different objects on display how long do visitors need to spend I the museum
Robert How, Director
Even if you just spend the two hours here that the average visitor spends I think you’ll be inspired and I think that actually it will enable you to really understand our place and our role in the natural world
