UK’s Most-Visited Attraction Reopens Gallery Shut Since WWII
London’s Natural History Museum is reopening a gallery that has been closed to the public since 1943. The second-floor space will return on 16 September as Nature and Us, a free temporary exhibition exploring how people have understood and used the natural world. The reopening is notable in its own right: the museum was the UK’s most-visited attraction in 2025, drawing more than 7.1 million visitors.
The gallery will initially stay open for 18 months and feature 50 objects, models and specimens. Highlights include a miniature Crystal Palace dinosaur, Jenny the Victorian monk seal skeleton, a 400,000-year-old handaxe and a Star Wars toy covered in bryozoans. Visitors can also touch a replica jaw from one of Britain’s earliest known domesticated dogs, dating back around 14,300 years.
The room has had several lives before becoming an exhibition space. It served as an osteology gallery and later a mammals gallery, before being used for botanical collections after the museum’s original herbarium was damaged during the Second World War. Its old wooden herbarium cabinets remain in place. Visitors will also be able to vote on which stories should appear in a permanent gallery planned for 2029.
What to Know Before You Go
- Location: Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London.
- Gallery: Nature and Us, second floor of the Waterhouse building.
- Opening date: 16 September 2026.
- Price: Free.
- Museum hours: Daily, 10:00–17:50; last entry 17:30.
- Booking: General admission is free, but reserving a museum entry slot is recommended at busy times.
- Time to allow: Around 30–45 minutes for the gallery, longer if combining it with the wider museum.
- Nearby inside the museum: Hintze Hall, dinosaur galleries and the museum gardens.
The draw is not only the 50 objects: visitors are getting access to a room most of the public has never seen. Anyone in London after 16 September can add it to a standard Natural History Museum visit without paying extra. Weekday afternoons are usually quieter, while weekends and school holidays are busier, so reserving a free museum entry slot should make the visit easier.