Little bit of a London history lesson for you (although I only discovered it myself recently)
When Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert they wanted to create an area of London full of education and culture.
This became the area around South Kensington, starting from the Albert Memorial in the north, via the Albert Hall, down to the South Kensington Museums (the V&A, History, and Science museums).
This area became known as Albertopolis.
You can read more about it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertopolis
And I have to say the Natural History Museum is one of the finest buildings in London. If you go there, try to ignore the contents and just look at the buidling (inside and out) it is wonderful
http://www.sivakumar.in/images/London/natural% 20history%20museum.gif
http://bozent.com/tpo/images/BritishNaturalHis toryMuseum5.jpg