Albertopolis is the nickname given to the area centred on

Exhibition Road Exhibition Road is a street in South Kensington, London which is home to several major museums and academic establishments, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, London, Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, Lon ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, named after

Prince Albert Prince Albert most commonly refers to: *Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–1861), consort of Queen Victoria *Albert II, Prince of Monaco (born 1958), present head of state of Monaco Prince Albert may also refer to: Royalty * Alb ...

, consort of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

. It contains many educational and cultural sites. It lies in the former village of Brompton in

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, former county in South East England, now mainly within Greater London. Its boundaries largely followed three rivers: the River Thames, Thames in the south, the River Lea, Le ...

, renamed as

South Kensington South Kensington is a district at the West End of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with the advent of the ra ...

, split between the

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (often known by its initialism as RBKC) is an Inner London, Inner London borough with Royal borough, royal status. It is the List of English districts by area, smallest borough in London and the secon ...

and the

City of Westminster The City of Westminster is a London borough with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in Greater London, England. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It contains a large par ...

(the border running along Imperial College Road), and the area bordered by

Cromwell Road Cromwell Road is a major London road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, designated as part of the A4 road (Great Britain), A4. It was created in the 19th century and is said to be named after Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver Cromwel ...

to the south and Kensington Road to the north.

Institutions

Busy ice rink at the Natural History Museum - geograph

Institutions in and around Albertopolis include: *

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

* Royal Institute of Navigation *

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

Albert Memorial The Albert Memorial is a Gothic Revival Ciborium (architecture), ciborium in Kensington Gardens, London, designed and dedicated to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert of Great Britain. Located directly north of the Royal Albert Ha ...

The following were originally institutions in their own right: *City & Guilds College, now Imperial College's Faculty of Engineering *

Geological Museum The Geological Museum (originally the Museum of Economic Geology then the Museum of Practical Geology) was a museum of geology in London. It started in 1835, making it one of the oldest public single science collections in the world. It transfe ...

, now a subsidiary of the Natural History Museum * Royal College of Science, now Imperial College's Faculty of Natural Sciences * Royal School of Mines, now a part of Imperial College's Faculty of Engineering Institutions formerly in Albertopolis include: *

Royal College of Organists The Royal College of Organists (RCO) is a charity and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, with members worldwide. Its role is to promote and advance organ playing and choral music, and it offers music education, training and de ...

, from 1904 to 1991. * Royal School of Naval Architecture, from 1864 to 1873. * Royal School of Needlework, from 1903 to 1987. * Imperial Institute, later

Commonwealth Institute The Commonwealth Education Trust was a registered charity established in 2007 as the successor trust to the Commonwealth Institute. The trust focuses on primary and secondary education and the training of teachers and invests on educational pr ...

, from 1893 to 1962. More recent additions to Albertopolis include: * Polish Hearth Club from 1939 *

Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (), known as Sikorski Institute, named after General Władysław Sikorski, is a leading London-based museum and archive for research into Poland during World War II and the Polish diaspora. It is a non-go ...

from 1945 * Ismaili Centre

History

Following the advice of

the area was purchased by the

Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 is an institution founded in 1850 to administer the Great Exhibition, Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, which was held in The Crystal Palace, London. The founding Presid ...

with the profits made from the

Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition that took ...

of 1851, which was held in a site in Hyde Park nearby to the north-east. This is commemorated in the name of the principal north–south street laid out on their estate, Exhibition Road. Prince Albert was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition and President of the Royal Commission, and the name "Albertopolis" seems to have been coined in the 1850s to celebrate and somewhat satirise his role in Victorian cultural life. After his death the term fell into disuse, and the area was more widely referred to as

. It was revived by architectural historians in the 1960s and popularised by the nascent conservation movement to bring attention to the complex of public Victorian buildings and the surrounding houses built on the Commissioners' estate, that were threatened with demolition by the expansion and redevelopment plans of Imperial College. Among the buildings threatened was the Imperial Institute, designed by T. E. Collcutt.

Overview

There is a central axis between the

Kensington Gardens Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, are among the Royal Parks of London. The gardens are shared by the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and sit immediately to the west of Hyde Pa ...

to the north and the central portal of the south façade of the Natural History Museum. The Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Music, the former tower of the otherwise-demolished Imperial Institute (now the Queen's Tower of Imperial College London) and the 1950s rear extension to the Science Museum are all aligned on this axis, which cannot be seen on the ground. This regular geometric alignment of Albertopolis can be observed readily only from the balconies of the Queen's Tower (very rarely open to visitors), although the northern part can be glimpsed from the top floor of the Science Museum. The closest tube station is

, linked to the museums by the South Kensington Subway. On 4 May 1885, the District Railway opened South Kensington Subway, a pedestrian subway (a tiled tunnel), running from the station beneath the length of Exhibition Road, giving sheltered access to the newly built museums for a toll of 1

penny A penny is a coin (: pennies) or a unit of currency (: pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. At present, it is ...

. The subway was originally intended to go as far as the Royal Albert Hall, but the construction of the Imperial Institute meant the tunnel emerged at the Science Museum where it exits onto Exhibition Road. Although it had cost £42,614 to construct (approximately £ today), it was closed on 10 November 1886 and afterwards was opened only occasionally for special museum events. Originally only opened during exhibitions in South Kensington, it was opened to the public free of charge in 1908. The subway is Grade II listed. There are also three research libraries in the area, the National Art Library, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dana Centre, part of the Science Museum, and Imperial College's Abdus Salam Library, located on

Queen's Lawn The Queen's Lawn is a green lawned area situated at the centre of Imperial College London's South Kensington campus, next to the Queen's Tower (London), Queen's Tower and immediately to the north of Imperial College Road. It provides an open spa ...

References

External links

Albertopolis online exhibition
from the Royal Institute of British Architects

from the Victoria and Albert Museum
Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851Survey of London: volume 38: South Kensington Museums Area
F. H. W. Sheppard (editor). Originally published by the Athlone Press for the Greater London Council, 1975. Available online as part o
British History Online

Walking tour of Albertopolis
Podcast, PDF and map. {{Imperial College London Areas of London Albertopolis Museum districts in the United Kingdom Great Exhibition Tourist attractions in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Tourist attractions in the City of Westminster South Kensington

Institutions

History

Overview

See also

References

External links