Fans of the Natural History Museum, rejoice, because it has just opened an exciting new permanent gallery, Treasures, which looks to be a big hitter. Curators have selected 22 extra-special objects from the museum’s vast collection, which heaves with 70 million specimens. From moon rock to a 147-million-year-old fossil, all of the specimens chosen for the gallery have fascinating stories behind them and are of “enormous scientific, historical and cultural significance”, according to museum director Dr Michael Dixon.

Following a sneaky peak of the collection, we’ve picked five of our favourite treasures:

1.    Guy the Gorilla

This stuffed ape was once one of the best-loved animals in London Zoo’s history. The western lowland gorilla first arrived at the zoo on Guy Fawkes Night 1947, hence his name. Clutching a hot water bottle, Guy was so terrified of the fireworks that he wouldn’t sleep until a keeper slept beside him. Visitors loved Guy for his gentle nature as he was known to catch small birds that flew into his enclosure, peer at them curiously and then let them go. Guy died of heart failure in 1978 after dental surgery. Taxidermist Arthur Hayward then spent nine months preparing him for display.

2.    Neanderthal skull

This 50,000-year-old specimen was the first Neanderthal skull ever discovered and has played a huge role in the study of ancient humans. “Researchers have had access to this skull for years, but this is the first time it has been on public display,” says museum researcher Chris Stringer.

3.    The world’s most expensive book

One of the best-known natural history books ever produced, Audubon‘s The Birds of America is renowned for its beautiful life-size, hand-coloured illustrations of birds. With only 120 copies in the entire world, complete bound sets can fetch a staggering £7 million. The museum is displaying a different page of the book every month to prevent fading.

4.    Barbary lion skull

Plucked from the Tower of London’s moat by two workmen in 1937, this Barbary lion is thought to have been part of the royal menagerie from around 1280-1385. “People living nearby must have been petrified to hear the lion’s roar,” says collection manager Richard Sabin.

5.    Charles Darwin’s pigeons

Bred in his garden as an experiment, Darwin‘s pigeons provided him with the evidence he needed to prove the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Treasures at the Natural History Museum opens on 30 November 2012

With Valentine’s Day approaching, Londoners are in an amorous mood. (Even the hippos at London Zoo are at it.)

Now the Natural History Museum has launched an exhibition dedicated to the science of sex, which aims to “pull off nature’s fig leaf and discover its most bizarre and intimate secrets”.

I had a preview this morning and it was fascinating stuff. There were videos of animals having sex and rearing their offspring, stuffed foxes and rabbits engaged in the sexual act, and even a few live animals (including stick insects, which stick to each other for days after mating).

You’ll learn about animals that have done away with males to become female-only species, compare the penis bones of different creatures, discover the seduction techniques of deer and birds, and consider the ins and outs of human sexual relationships.

Open to all ages, Sexual Nature will teach both kids and grown-ups a thing or two about reproduction.

Sexual Nature is at the Natural History Museum from 11 February to 2 October 2011

Next spring, the British Museum will showcase treasures from Afghanistan’s National Museum in Kabul. Here, curator St John Simpson discusses the exhibition for our World in London series.

“Although the Afghanistan exhibition doesn’t open until March 2011, we recently had a briefing for members of the press, which gave us an opportunity to introduce the incredible objects that will eventually go on show.

In the exhibition title we describe Afghanistan as the crossroads of the ancient world and I think that the 200 objects spanning 3,000 years will show exactly why that’s an appropriate description.

Its geographical position – on the edge of central Asia with India and China beyond to the east and Iran, the Middle East and the numerous cultures of the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe to the west – means Afghanistan was criss-crossed by ancient trade routes.

In many ways then, as now, it was a hub and meeting place for diverse cultures and neighbours, both near and distant, over thousands of years.

In the modern world it’s all too easy to think of Afghanistan solely as a place of conflict – and indeed the objects that will feature in the exhibition tell that story as well – but taking the long view we can see in the rich materials and ornate craftsmanship of these objects a far broader story.

Afghanistan has always been part of a complex network of cultures that doesn’t really take account of contemporary political boundaries. Long-distance travel and globalisation may seem like relatively new inventions, but the ancient world was much more connected than many of us may think. I hope we can help bring this inter-connectedness out in the exhibition.

One of the pieces on loan from the National Museum in Kabul illustrates this point particularly well: a pendant from the Tillya Tepe hoard found in the north-west of the country.

It features inlays of gold and turquoise. Two dragon-like beasts in the design suggest to some the influence of Chinese art but to others represent the heavenly horses of the Ferghana valley of neighbouring Central Asia.

The pendant also includes lapis lazuli, a type of blue stone only found in Afghanistan but coveted in the wider world for thousands of years. It crops up in the jewellery of ancient Egypt, the art of the ancient near east and as far afield as the art of the Italian Renaissance.

The fact that we nearly lost many of these stunning objects and signposts to the past to the events of Afghanistan’s recent history underlines how precious they are as well as the fragility of cultural heritage.”

Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World is at the British Museum from 3 March to 3 July 2011. Where else would you go to experience the culture of Afghanistan in London? Let us know in the comments below.

On a random Friday about a decennium ago I decided to leave the shores of Sweden in search of a new place to call home, and thought I would stop by London on the way. Ten years later I am still in London, and now I can both drive like a London cabbie (my car has the scars to prove it) and navigate the Tube system in rush hour (sometimes I don’t even get bruised by it). In short, London is my home now; I am a Londoner in all but accent.

London is overcrowded, but the fact that it is overcrowded is also what well and truly makes London one of the most vibrant and entertaining places in the world. Gothenburg has its small little streets with wonderful cafes all set to the beautiful backdrop of the Atlantic, Stockholm has its archipelago and lakes, London has its people and its ever-changing soup of cultures and influences.

If you happen to like hard hitting-beats because they are likely to turn you into a brainwashed zombie, you will find like-minded people in London to share the experience. If you are really interested in a specific technique to fold napkins, used to send coded messages in the Vatican during the 4th century (a technique only hinted at in a lonely paragraph in a book about masonry), London is the place where you will find someone who shares your interest, and there is most likely even a museum dedicated to napkin folding that you can meet up in. You can find any kind of food, from any country, region or city, sometimes even from a single village. You can spend your whole life in London finding new things to try and new things to experience, and that is why I never left London.

For those who want to sample Sweden in London:

• National food: IKEA has a Swedish food hall, try the flatbread
• Regional food: There is a stall on Borough Market that sells west coast fish, try the west coast salad
• Swedish city experience: Scandinavian Kitchen, it’s almost like going to a real Gothenburg cafe, try their taster “Swedish Smorgasbord”
• A Swedish village: Garlic and Shots in Soho, the founding “Olson Brothers” are from a one-horse village in the darkest end of Sweden, try the blood shot if you dare

What’s your experience of Sweden in London? Tell us in the comments below.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, today opened the new Wandsworth Museum in South London, which houses a fascinating array of exhibits and artefacts from the local area.

The new museum replaces the previous one which was closed in 2007, and it provides a detailed insight into life in Wandsworth from the Stone Age to the modern day.

Along with an impressive collection of objects, there is also a timeline of events telling the story of the cultural and natural landscape of the borough.

Among the exhibits on show is a woolly rhinoceros skull dated to 25,000BC, a telephone exchange, and a diagram of the local Young’s brewery site.

There is also a collection of art depicting John Burns, the former local Member of Parliament and one of the leaders of the London Dock Strike in 1889.

Mr. Johnson told Visit London:

“I think it’s fantastically important to have museums such as this because we live in an age where people are both forgetful of their history but also incredibly excited when they discover about it.

“It’s frightfully important that local kids are able to come here and open a window into the lives of previous generations and inhabitants of Wandsworth.

“This was a very important place in the life of London and the life of the nation as a whole and we’ve now got great exhibits here to tell that story.”

The new Wandsworth Museum opens to the public on 3 Sep (website coming soon).

What’s your favourite local museum in London?

This video from our friends Steven Gardner and presenter Will Gowing makes a great accessory to our suggestions for London’s specialist interest museums and quirky museums.

See the boys check out the Hunterian, the Bank of England Museum, Dr Johnson’s House and more on their trip around London’s lesser-known museums.

And if you like their style, subscribe to their free, weekly London Update, and you’ll get 90 seconds of London video goodness delivered to your inbox each week.

The rugby museum joins the British Museum and Tate Modern on a list of around 100 accredited attractions.

“The award is recognition that the museum plays an important role in preserving rugby’s worldwide heritage,” said curator Michael Rowe.

The World Rugby Museum is home to the world’s largest collection of rugby memorabilia, including early match programmes, photos, letters and rugby equipment.

An exhibition about women’s rugby opens on 12 August to coincide with the Women’s Rugby World Cup. The cup will be on display alongside posters, objects and images from the early days of the game.

England 2010: The Women’s Rugby World Cup runs from 12 August 2010 to 6 April 2011

This week’s photo features the Geffrye Museum‘s gardens on a lovely summer day. The museum has five attractive walled gardens, including a traditional herb garden with plants for medicine, cosmetic use and cooking.

If you’re out and about enjoying London this week, don’t forget to take some photos and add them to the Visit London Flickr pool.

The Florence Nightingale Museum re-opens today, coinciding with both Florence Nightingale’s birthday and the centenary of her death. I took a sneaky look round the refurbished museum as they were adding the finishing touches a fortnight ago.

On my way there, I wondered if I’d taken a wrong turn, as despite following the arrows labelled “museum”, I seemed to be headed towards the A&E department at St Thomas’ Hospital. In fact, the museum is tucked away next to the hospital, in a fitting location for a woman who dedicated her life to nursing.

Through touch screen displays, stethoscope audio guides, displays of personal items, and old medical equipment, the museum tells the story of Florence Nightingale from her childhood to how she became known as the Lady with the Lamp, to her later life.

Florence Nightingale is well-known for revolutionising nursing in the 1800s by improving hygiene in hospitals. But in this exhibition, you can see the other contributions she made, such as the meticulous records she kept on her nurses (a skill that started early as you’ll observe in her childhood log books and journals from family holidays). And how she used her unwanted fame to campaign for better conditions in military hospitals – including directly to Queen Victoria!

I was particularly interested to learn how Florence shunned convention and followed what she felt was a god-given call to nursing despite the protests of her parents. Nursing wasn’t considered a suitable profession for an educated woman such as Florence. She also refused several marriage proposals, finding happiness in her work instead.

What’s New?

The £1.4 million transformation has made the museum more interactive, split the story into three pavilions representing three sections of Florence Nightingale’s life, and added space for temporary exhibitions. This was my first visit to the Florence Nightingale Museum but one visitor, who had visited three times before, told me it was “bigger, better and prettier” than before!

The Florence Nightingale Museum opens on 12 May.

The Churchill War Rooms are open to the public so you can go along and experience history for yourself. The bunker is almost exactly as it was left after the war, including the amazing map room. It’s incredible to think that so many people lived and worked here.

If you’re over 18, you can even sleepover in May for Museums at Night! I think the fear of seeing Daleks might keep me awake, despite the fact I definitely didn’t see any on my last visit!

If you’re brave enough to want to see a Dalek, check out our Doctor Who in London feature.

Although the episode wasn’t actually filmed in Churchill’s War Rooms, Mark Gatiss who wrote the episode (and played the Spitfire pilot) visited the museum for inspiration. Watch Mark’s visit in the behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Confidential. We love the bit where Mark says:

“I would urge anybody who can to come and visit this place, it’s a museum but it’s an amazingly authentic experience. I would be very very happy if people who watched it and enjoyed the episode would then come here to find out more about it, because I think it’s a testament to an extraordinary group of people and an extraordinary time.”

Churchill War Rooms are open daily 9:00 – 18:00. Adults £14.95, concessions £7.50 – £12, under 16s free.