Natural History Museum, London

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 ceiling of the Central Hall consists of six rows of painted panels, three on each side of the roof's apex. Above the landing at the southern end of the building, the ceiling is divided into nine-panel blocks. The uppermost three panels in each block consist of what Waterhouse termed "archaic" panels, depicting stylised plants on a green background. Each of the lower six panels in each block depicts a plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire, against a pale background. Above the remainder of the Central Hall the archaic panels remain in the same style, but each set of six lower panels depicts a single plant, spreading across the six panels and against the same pale background; these represent plants considered of particular significance either to visitors, or to the history of the museum. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall comprises just four rows of panels. The two uppermost rows are of a simple design of heraldic symbols of the then constituent countries of the United Kingdom; each panel in the lower two rows depicts a different plant found in Britain or Ireland, in keeping with the room's intended purpose as a display of British natural history. As the ceilings were built cheaply, they are extremely fragile and require regular repair. They underwent significant conservation work in 1924, 1975 and 2016. The restoration in 2016 coincided with the removal of "Dippy", a cast of a Diplodocus skeleton which had previously stood in the Central Hall, and the installation of the skeleton of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling.

The Geological Museum (originally the Museum of Economic Geology then the Museum of Practical Geology), started in 1835 as one of the oldest single science museums in the world and now part of the Natural History Museum in London. It transferred from Jermyn Street to Exhibition Road, South Kensington in 1935 in a building designed by Sir Richard Allison and John Hatton Markham of the Office of Works.

The Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, usually referred to as the Lycée or the French Lycée, is a French co-educational primary and secondary independent day school, situated in South Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It is managed by the Agency for French Teaching Abroad, AEFE, with its curriculum accredited by the French National Ministry of Education and overseen by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.There is a "British Section" for English-speaking pupils in the secondary classes, preparing for GCSEs and A-levels. In 2008 part of the school's primary classes were transferred to a site in Fulham, the "Marie d'Orliac" school. There are three other primary "feeder" schools elsewhere in London, the André Malraux school in Ealing and Wix School in Clapham.

The Institut français du Royaume-Uni is a branch of the Institut français, which represents and promotes French learning and culture in the United Kingdom. It is situated in London's South Kensington at Queensberry Place, a turning off Cromwell Road, facing the Natural History Museum. Founded in 1910, as The Université des Lettres française the Institut Français has branches in London and Edinburgh (See: French Institute for Scotland). "Marie d'Orliac, who had become Marie Bohn on her marriage, directed the Institute and the school from 1910 to 1920." The London branch includes the Ciné Lumière cinema, and a library which includes the Bibliothèque Quentin Blake for children's books. It is a Grade II listed building.

The Faculty of Medicine is the academic centre for medical and clinical research and teaching at Imperial College London. It contains the Imperial College School of Medicine, which is the college's undergraduate medical school.

Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM) is the undergraduate medical school of Imperial College London in England, and one of the United Hospitals. It is part of the college's Faculty of Medicine, and was formed by the merger of several historic medical schools, with core campuses at South Kensington, St Mary's, Charing Cross, Hammersmith and Chelsea and Westminster. The school ranked 3rd in the world for medicine in the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

The Department of Chemistry is responsible for chemistry teaching and research at Imperial College London. The department has around 50 academic staff and 850 students, with around 550 studying undergraduate courses and 300 research students. The department is based in Chemistry Building along Imperial College Road, looking over Queen's Lawn, but also uses the remaining section of the Royal College of Science building. The department has relocated some of its research to new facilities at the 154.4 million pound Molecular Sciences Research Hub at Imperial's new White City campus. The department ranks 9th in the QS 2018 subject world rankings.

The College of Psychic Studies (founded in 1884 as the London Spiritualist Alliance) is a non-profit organisation based in South Kensington, London. It is dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritualist phenomena.

Imperial College Road is a tree-lined road in South Kensington, London, England. It runs east–west with Queen's Gate to the west and Exhibition Road to the east. The road forms part of the boundary between Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the south and the City of Westminster to the north. It lies at the heart of the area known as Albertopolis, with a number of museums, cultural buildings and educational institutions in the area, a legacy of the Great Exhibition of 1851 held in Hyde Park to the north and promoted by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Formerly known as Imperial Institute Road, the road now takes its name from Imperial College London, on whose campus it is located. The Queen's Tower (surrounded by the Queen's Lawn adjacent to Imperial College Road) dominates the view to the north halfway along the road, along with the college's Central Library. To the south are the Department of Chemistry of Imperial College, the Sir Alexander Fleming Building, and the Science Museum. Beyond these buildings is the Natural History Museum.

Albertopolis is the nickname given to the area centred on Exhibition Road in London, named after Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. It contains many educational and cultural sites. It is in South Kensington, split between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster (the border running along Imperial College Road), and the area bordered by Cromwell Road to the south and Kensington Road to the north.

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. It is one of the five museums in the Science Museum Group.

The Newcomen Society is an international learned society that promotes and celebrates the history of engineering and technology. It was founded in London in 1920 and takes its name from Thomas Newcomen, one of the inventors associated with the early development of the steam engine and who is widely considered the "father of the Industrial Revolution". The motto of the Society is the Latin actorum memores simul affectamus agenda, meaning "mindful of things that have taken place, at the same time we strive after things yet to be done". The choice of a griffin regardant for the logo was to symbolise vigilance and looking backward while going forward. The Newcomen Society is based at the Science Museum in London. There are regional branches in England: Midlands (Birmingham), North West (Manchester), North East (Newcastle), Western (Bristol) and Southern (Portsmouth), South Yorkshire (Sheffield) and one in Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh). The Society is concerned with all branches of engineering: civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, structural, aeronautical, marine, chemical and manufacturing as well as biography and invention. It publishes the International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology (formerly the Transactions of the Newcomen Society) and Newcomen Links, a quarterly newsletter. An online archive of previous Transactions is also available to members of the Society. The Society also has a YouTube Channel with videos of Meetings, Conferences and Online Lectures. The Newcomen Society is a Registered Charity number: 215410 and a Company Limited by Guarantee No. 00691545 An American branch was established in 1923, but the Newcomen Society of the United States was entirely separate from its UK counterpart. The American group disbanded in 2007.