Natural History Museum

Don't miss the stunning architecture of the new Cocoon space, which offers opportunities to gain an insight into the work done by the museum's scientists. If you have children with you, get hands-on and explore specimens in the Investigate Centre.

The museum's encyclopaedic permanent collections comprise some 70 million specimens. The oldest item, the Wold Cottage meteorite, is thought to be around 4.6 billion years old.

The meteorite is part of a bold new permanent display. In November 2012, the museum drew together its most significant and valuable objects and put them in the upper mezzanine of the central hall. Overlooking 'dippy', the museum's replica diplodocus, the Treasures gallery comprises 22 star objects, including the skull of a Barbary lion, thought to have lived in the Tower of London around the year 1300; an archaeopteryx fossil, the most valuable fossil in the collection; Audubon's The Birds of America, the world's most expensive book; a dodo skeleton; fragments of moon rock; and a first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.