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The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.
The room where evolution was announced: Darwin and Wallace's papers were read here on 1 July 1858, and Linnaeus's own collections are in the vault.
Learned societiesGo inside
The world's oldest active biological society, at Burlington House since 1856 beside the Royal Academy, keeps the herbarium, insects, shells and library that Carl Linnaeus assembled and that its founder bought from his widow in 1784, in a bomb-proof strongroom under the courtyard. Upstairs is the meeting room where, on a July evening in 1858, the secretary read out Darwin's and Wallace's papers on natural selection to an audience that did not notice, with neither author present. Tours by arrangement go into the vault; the library is open to readers.
Tours by arrangement; the library Tuesday to Friday 10:00–17:00 by appointment
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.