London

The treasure hunt map of South Kensington (click to enlarge)

South Kensington
9 Natural History Museum
This beautiful building opened in Easter 1881. Most people head straight to the dinosaurs, but we’d like you to step into the creepy-crawlie exhibition. Inside, you’ll find a mock-up of a domestic house, filled with everyday products and the insects they attract. Which bugs are sunning themselves on the kitchen sponge?
Answer

10 Science Museum
Now head round the corner to the equally interesting Science Museum. Whip through the hall containing loads of boring steam engines and head up to the third floor for the exhibition on flight. One of the first exhibits that confronts you is a scale model of a balloon, within which in 1783 two aviator pioneers took part in the first recorded flight in human history. But over which European city?
Answer
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11 Victoria & Albert Museum
Leave the Science Museum and cross Exhibition Road to enter the V&A through its Henry Cole Wing. From there make your way to the British Galleries. While heading there ponder how, since opening in 1852 following the success of the Great Exhibition, the V&A has continued to pull in the crowds with its diverse range of historical and contemporary exhibits. Most importantly, this was also the first London museum to have a café. Once in the British Galleries, look for the reconstruction of the music room from Norfolk House, which, bizarrely, boasts a model of a chap in a gaudy cloak firing arrows at a target. How many bullseyes has he struck?
Answer

*The V&A has closed the gallery with the answer to question 11 in it. The closure was unforseen, so please accept our apologies. And if you were wondering.. the answer is 'none'.*

12 Brompton Oratory
Next to the V&A, London’s second largest Roman Catholic church is really called the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but everybody knows it better as Brompton Oratory. Look to the right of the church and you’ll see a building decked out in the bright-red tiles familiar from many of London’s tube stations – this was Brompton Road Piccadilly Line station, closed in 1934. Inside the church, to the right as you enter, is a monument to war dead and an inscription on the floor saying ‘Consummatum est’. During the Cold War, KGB agents would leave information behind the columns to the left of this little altar, to be picked up by fellow agents. Outside the church in the lobby you’ll find another monument to the dead: three boards naming all brothers and fathers who were based at the church before dying. What’s the surname of the tenth priest down on the second panel?
Answer

13 Opposite the V&A
When the V&A was first opened it was called the South Kensington Museum in the wake of the Great Exhibition. It didn’t receive its more familiar name until 1899. The museum’s first director, Henry Cole, lived directly opposite in a house that now boasts a blue plaque and also a gold board informing us that this is now the embassy of which eastern European country?
Answer