Science Museum

About Science Museum

Science museum in London, United Kingdom

The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London, founded in 1857 and one of the city's major tourist attractions, with more than 2.8 million visitors in 2025; it is one of the five museums of the Science Museum Group, known until 2012 as the National Museum of Science and Industry. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom it does not charge for admission, although visitors are asked to donate if they can, and temporary exhibitions may incur a fee. The museum is dedicated to scientific exhibitions and collections in all fields except the life sciences, and houses famous historical machines and inventions from the earliest steam locomotives such as Rocket and the engines of the Industrial Revolution to the Apollo 10 command module that orbited the Moon; the space exhibits are especially popular, alongside galleries on medicine, mathematics, communications and the Makers of the Modern World. Exhibitions concentrate on explaining scientific principles with working models and place a strong emphasis on education and attracting children: the museum opened a Children's Gallery in the 1930s and continues to lead in this area, with three interactive galleries today for younger visitors aged 5 to 16, the best known being Wonderlab, and it runs Science Nights in which children spend an evening on experiments before sleeping in the museum among the exhibits; there is also an IMAX cinema and simulators. The museum also holds a vast library of scientific and medical books and journals. It stands beside the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, so the three can be combined into one unforgettable day for families.

Where:

London, United Kingdom