Societies & Academia

London's societies, institutes and universities, and the doors they open to everyone else: lecture theatres, libraries, collections and free exhibitions at institutions that have been arguing about the world since the seventeenth century. Most of it costs nothing. Events are also listed under What's On.

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Royal Geographical Society

Monday night lectures and free exhibitions in a Norman Shaw building behind the Albert Hall, with two centuries of maps and expedition papers behind them.

Public talksExhibitionsWorth it for the building

The Society was founded in 1830 to advance geography and spent the next century funding the expeditions that made and unmade that word - Livingstone, Scott, Shackleton, Hillary and Tenzing - and it holds the archive that came back from them: two million maps, photographs, diaries and instruments.

What a visitor gets is the Exhibition Pavilion on Exhibition Road, which is open to all with no booking while a show is on and costs nothing, and the Monday night lectures, which are the Society's public programme and have been running in one form or another since the beginning. The building is Norman Shaw's, red brick and Dutch gables, built as a private house and turned over to geography in 1912.

Where
1 Kensington Gore, SW7 2AR
Nearest station
South Kensington · 10 min walk

Open to the public for exhibitions and events rather than to fixed hours; the Exhibition Pavilion's times vary with what is on, and the Society is generally shut at weekends and on bank holidays.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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