London South Kensington Tourist Map

South Kensington is London's museum quarter, built with the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and nicknamed Albertopolis after Prince Albert, who drove the plan. Three national museums stand side by side on and around Exhibition Road, with the Royal Albert Hall and Kensington Gardens just to the north. No other square mile of London packs in as much to see for free.

The Natural History Museum fills Alfred Waterhouse's terracotta cathedral, with Hope, a blue whale skeleton, hanging in Hintze Hall. Next door, the Science Museum runs from steam engines to the Apollo 10 command module, and the Victoria and Albert Museum covers 5,000 years of art and design. All three are free; only special exhibitions and a few galleries, such as Wonderlab, charge.

North on Kensington Gore, the Royal Albert Hall, opened by Queen Victoria in 1871, hosts the BBC Proms every summer and runs guided tours year-round. Behind it, the Royal College of Music has a free museum of historic instruments. On Brompton Road, Brompton Oratory is a grand Italianate Catholic church, free to enter, where choral Masses are sung on Sundays.

When to go: weekday afternoons in term time are quietest; weekends and school holidays bring long queues at the Natural History Museum, so book a free timed slot. The V&A stays open late on Fridays, and the Proms run from mid-July to mid-September. Stations: South Kensington, with a pedestrian subway to the museums, Gloucester Road and Knightsbridge.