National Museum of Natural History
About the Museum
The National Museum of Natural History is the Smithsonian's great green-domed building on the north side of the National Mall, and it is one of the most visited museums in the world. It opened in 1910 and holds well over a hundred million specimens and objects, from meteorites and dinosaurs to insects, minerals, human remains and the tools of vanished cultures. Only a small fraction is on view, but that fraction fills three floors of halls arranged around a soaring rotunda where a bull African elephant stands on a pedestal to greet you.
The layout is easy to grasp. The ground floor, at the Constitution Avenue entrance, has the visitor centre and a moai from Easter Island. The first floor, at the Mall entrance, holds the rotunda, the Sant Ocean Hall with its life-size right whale, the Hall of Mammals, the Hall of Human Origins and the fossil hall known as Deep Time, where the Nation's T. rex stands over a Triceratops. Upstairs on the second floor are the Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals with the Hope Diamond, the Insect Zoo, the Bone Hall and a live butterfly pavilion.
Entry is free, so it is easy to break a visit into two or three shorter ones. Families tend to head straight for the dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond, which means the quieter halls on the second floor and the Ocean Hall's deeper sections are good places to escape the crowds.
Before You Go
- Admission is free and no timed ticket is needed, but there is a security screening at each entrance, so travel light.
- The Mall entrance leads straight into the rotunda and the elephant; the Constitution Avenue entrance is often faster at busy times and brings you in past the moai.
- Arrive at opening or come after three in the afternoon to see the dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond without long queues.
- The Hope Diamond is on the second floor at the far end of the Gems and Minerals hall; the Deep Time fossil hall is on the first floor to the right of the rotunda.
- Photography without flash is allowed throughout the permanent halls.
- The Butterfly Pavilion on the second floor needs a separate timed ticket; everything else in the museum is free.
Collection Areas
Highlights
10 works. Each work has a full written and audio guide.
