The Cromwellian

The Embassy of Venezuela in London is the diplomatic mission of Venezuela in the United Kingdom. Venezuela also maintains a building on Grafton Way, Fitzrovia housing the Consular and Cultural Secttions as well as the Defence Attaché's Office.

The Ismaili Centre, London is one of six such centres world-wide. Established in South Kensington more than thirty years ago, it is a religious, social and cultural meeting place for the Ismaili Muslim community in the United Kingdom and is the first such centre to be specially designed and built for Ismailis in the Western world.

The Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral (or V&A Spiral, or The Spiral) was a proposed extension to the 19th-century London building which houses the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world's largest museum of decorative arts. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind and the designer, artist, and writer, Cecil Balmond. The museum chose the design over seven others in competition in 1996 but, after much controversy and failing three times to attract the necessary funding, the project was abandoned in 2004.     When the design was chosen in 1996, Libeskind was relatively unknown, but in 1999 he won international acclaim for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and his master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York has made him a household name there. 

The Exhibition Road Courtyard (named as Sackler Courtyard between 2017 and 2022, then appearing as Exhibition Road Courtyard on maps) is a public courtyard that serves as an entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It is part of the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter entrance and expansion of the Museum, completed in 2017 and designed by architectural practice AL_A, the firm of architect Amanda Levete.The courtyard opens out onto the street (Exhibition Road) through a perforated entrance gate. It's made of 11,000 handmade tiles, a reference to the V&A's heritage as a world-leader in ceramic study, collection and preservation. It is the world's first porcelain public courtyard, and special purpose non-slip porcelain tiles had to be created for the project. The courtyard also features a cafe and an oculus, with view down into the new performance hall of the Museum below.

South Kensington is a London Underground station in the district of South Kensington, south west London. It is served by the District, Circle and Piccadilly lines. On the District and Circle lines it is between Gloucester Road and Sloane Square, and on the Piccadilly line between Gloucester Road and Knightsbridge. It is in Travelcard Zone 1. The main station entrance is located at the junction of Old Brompton Road (A3218), Thurloe Place, Harrington Road, Onslow Place and Pelham Street. Subsidiary entrances are located in Exhibition Road giving access by pedestrian tunnel to the Natural History, Science and Victoria and Albert Museums. Also close by are the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College London, the Royal College of Music, the London branch of the Goethe-Institut and the Ismaili Centre. The station is in two parts: sub-surface platforms opened in 1868 by the Metropolitan Railway and the District Railway as part of the companies' extension of the Inner Circle route eastwards from Gloucester Road to Westminster and deep level platforms opened in 1906 by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway. A variety of underground and main line services have operated over the sub-surface tracks, which have been modified several times to suit operational demands with the current arrangement being achieved in the 1960s. The deep-level platforms have remained largely unaltered, although the installation of escalators in the 1970s to replace lifts improved interchanges between the two parts of the station. Parts of the sub-surface station and the Exhibition Road pedestrian tunnel are Grade II listed.

Twelve Responses to Tragedy, or the Yalta Memorial, is a memorial located in the Yalta Memorial Garden on Cromwell Road in South Kensington in west London. The memorial commemorates people displaced as a result of the Yalta Conference at the conclusion of the Second World War. Created by the British sculptor Angela Conner, the work consists of twelve bronze busts atop a stone base. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial (also by Conner) from 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.

Museum Lane runs between two of London's leading museums in South Kensington, namely the Science Museum to the north and the Natural History Museum (formerly the Geological Museum) to the south. It runs to the west off Exhibition Road through a gateway connecting the two museums and connects with Queen's Gate. Opposite on Exhibition Road is the Henry Cole Wing of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Dana Centre is just to the north at the Queen's Gate end. The lane provided access to the "Exhibition of Science" at the Science Museum in 1951, part of the Festival of Britain. This included exhibits such as Ferranti's Nimrod, an early computer custom-built to play a computer game. Museum Lane provides disabled access to the Natural History Museum. During the Exhibition Road Music Day there has been a Museum Lane stage as part of the festivities.The postcode is London SW7 and the lane is within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The nearest London Underground station is South Kensington tube station to the south along Exhibition Road.

The Yalta Memorial Garden (or the Cromwell Gardens Triangle or Thurloe Place Gardens) is a small triangular garden in South Kensington, west London, SW7. It is 0.0417 hectares (0.103 acres) in size. The garden contains Twelve Responses to Tragedy (or the Yalta Memorial), a memorial located that commemorates people displaced as a result of the Yalta Conference at the conclusion of World War II. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial dedicated in 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.The land on which the garden is situated was first described in 1928 when it was part of the Crown Estate by the Report of the Royal Commission on London Squares as a 'grass plot with a few trees'.The garden is located at the junction of Cromwell Gardens, Thurloe Place and is adjacent to the private Thurloe Square. The Victoria & Albert Museum is immediately north of the garden, on the opposite side of Cromwell Gardens. The museum maintains the garden. The garden and memorial are publicly accessible at all times.

The National Art Library (NAL) is a major reference library, situated in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), a museum of decorative arts in London. The NAL holds the UK's most comprehensive collection of both books as art and books about art, which includes many genres and time periods. The NAL is open to the public, and as a closed reference library, items must be requested through the staff and cannot be removed from the reading room. The collections cover a wide range of art and design topics, including books about artists and art techniques, and consists of many different collections materials, including archival materials, artist's books, and children's literature. The library also serves as the museum's curatorial department for book arts. As a reference library, the NAL also serves as a training library for students, curators and museum staff, and the public.The current mission of the NAL includes making information about art history and practice widely available, and aims to serve both national and international communities.

Media Space is a 642-square-metre (6,910 sq ft) exhibition space at the London Science Museum, developed in association with the National Media Museum. Opened in September 2013, the space comprises an extensive gallery surrounded by cultural spaces for display and participation, for mixing across the arts, sciences and creative industries. It also intended to be a showcase for the National Media Museum collections in photography, as well as cinematography and broadcast technology, and an arena where audiences will engage with how new technologies have impacted on today’s creative industries. It is intended for adult audiences.

The bust of Thomas Baker is a 1638 marble portrait sculpture created by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with much of the bust undertaken by a pupil of Bernini, probably Andrea Bolgi. It is currently held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who purchased the bust in 1921 for 1480 English guineas.

The Destruction of the Country House 1875–1975 was an exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1974, commissioned by V&A Director Roy Strong and curated by John Harris, Marcus Binney and Peter Thornton (then working, respectively, at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Country Life magazine and the V&A Department of Furniture and Woodwork). The exhibition included a "Hall of Destruction", decorated with falling columns and illustrations of some of the thousand country houses demolished since 1875, brought down by falling estate incomes, rising costs, death duties, and damage caused by government requisitioning during the Second World War. Described as a "landmark" exhibition, the graphic illustration of the scale of destruction of Britain's built heritage changed public opinion and encouraged moves to protect the country houses that remained. The success of the exhibition inspired the formation of the campaigning group, Save Britain's Heritage, in 1975 – a year that was designated as European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe - but the changed public mood could not prevent the sale of the extraordinary collection of art and furniture at Mentmore Towers in 1975, and of the empty building itself in 1977, to pay taxes following the death of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery in 1973. The exhibition was followed in 1977 and 1979 by two further exhibitions at the V&A on British architectural heritage: Change and Decay: The Future of our Churches (curated by Strong, Binney and Peter Burman), and then The Garden: A Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (organised by Harris).