51°29′53″N0°10′36″W / 51.49806°N 0.17667°W /51.49806; -0.17667
Albertopolis is the nickname given to the area centred onExhibition Road inLondon, named afterPrince Albert, consort ofQueen Victoria. It contains many educational and cultural sites.
It lies in the former village ofBrompton inMiddlesex, renamed asSouth Kensington, split between theRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and theCity of Westminster (the border running alongImperial College Road), and the area bordered byCromwell Road to the south andKensington Road to the north.
Institutions in and around Albertopolis include:
The following were originally institutions in their own right:
Institutions formerly in Albertopolis include:
More recent additions to Albertopolis include:
Following the advice ofPrince Albert[1] the area was purchased by theRoyal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 with the profits made from theGreat Exhibition of 1851, which was held in a site inHyde Park nearby to the north-east. This is commemorated in the name of the principal north–south street laid out on their estate, Exhibition Road.[2]
Prince Albert was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition and President of the Royal Commission. The name "Albertopolis" seems to have been coined in the 1850s[2] to celebrate and somewhat satirise his role in Victorian cultural life. After his death the term fell into disuse, and the area was more widely referred to asSouth Kensington.[2]
The name was revived by architectural historians in the 1960s and popularised by the nascentconservation movement to bring attention to the complex of public Victorian buildings and the surrounding houses built on the Commissioners' estate, that were threatened with demolition by the expansion and redevelopment plans of Imperial College. Among the buildings threatened was theImperial Institute,[3] designed byT. E. Collcutt.
There is a central axis between theAlbert Memorial inKensington Gardens to the north and the central portal of the south façade of the Natural History Museum. The Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Music, the former tower of the otherwise-demolished Imperial Institute (now theQueen's Tower of Imperial College London) and the 1950s rear extension to the Science Museum are all aligned on this axis, which cannot be seen on the ground.
This regular geometric alignment of Albertopolis can be observed readily only from the balconies of the Queen's Tower, very rarely open to visitors. The northern part can be glimpsed from the top floor of the Science Museum.
The closest tube station isSouth Kensington, linked to the museums by the South KensingtonSubway.
In May 1885, the District Railway openedSouth Kensington Subway,a pedestrian subway (a tiled tunnel), running from the station beneath the length of Exhibition Road, giving sheltered access to the newly built museums for a toll of 1penny. The subway was originally intended to go as far as the Royal Albert Hall, but the construction of the Imperial Institute meant the tunnel emerged at the Science Museum where it exits onto Exhibition Road. It cost £42,614 to construct, approximately £5.81 million today.[4] It was closed in November 1886 and afterwards was opened only occasionally for special museum events.[citation needed]
Originally only opened during exhibitions in South Kensington, it was opened to the public free of charge in 1908.[citation needed] The subway is Grade II listed.[5]
There are three research libraries in the area, theNational Art Library, in the Victoria and Albert Museum,Dana Centre, part of the Science Museum, and Imperial College'sAbdus Salam Library, located onQueen's Lawn.
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