Come to South Kensington and you can walk amongst dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum or treat yourself to a night at The Proms in the Royal Albert Hall! This grand and hugely important district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, inside the congestion charging zone of central London, is crammed with world famous tourist attractions for you to visit and boarded by equally impressive and significant districts such as Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Kensington and Earls Court. As you’ll be situated in tube Zone 1, and have easy access to Gloucester Road and South Kensington tube stations, the whole of London will be well within your grasp!

South Kensington has a lot to thank Prince Albert (husband to Queen Victoria) for! This entire area was mostly agricultural land that supplied fruit and vegetables to London until the arrival of The Great Exhibition in neighbouring Hyde Park in 1851. The profits from this exhibition were used to buy 87 acres of land in South Kensington, now known as Albertopolis, upon which Prince Albert intended to build permanent facilities for enlightenment of the public. Unfortunately he died before his ideas came to fruition, but 3 of London’s top museums and educational institutions like Imperial College London stand on this site today.

From the 1860’s onwards landowners surrounding Albertopolis began to build. Street after street of grand houses and mansions were constructed. The areas popularity increased with the introduction of new roads, and when the tube arrived in the late 1860’s linking the area with main railway terminals, Westminster and The City, South Kensington was absorbed into London itself. Nowadays you will find that South Kensington is a hugely important part of London packed with gigantic tourist attractions, overflowing with students and tourists and inhabited by wealthy residents.

If you want stay in amongst many of London’s greatest tourist attractions then South Kensington is definitely the place to be as its home to the Natural History Museum , the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall to name but a few. Walk amongst the elegant and grand 19th and 20th century buildings and you’ll detect a distinctly international feel about the place thanks to a large student population, a significant proportion of Italian, French and Spanish inhabitants, and masses upon masses of tourists! You’ll find plenty of affordable hotels and eateries to cope with demand, so you won’t have to raid your piggy bank to stay here! You’ll also be pleasantly surprised just how many neighbouring attractions are within walking distance, or a short journey via South Kensington’s well connected tube stations.

As South Kensington has such a transient population of tourists and students attending educational establishments and language schools in the area, it is slightly less exclusive than its neighbours. However this has massive advantages for you as there are plenty of cheap places to stay and eat out! The sheer number of tourist hot spots does make this place an incredibly bustling and busy place to stay as everyone wants to come here at some point during their visit to London, but at least you will only have to walk back to your hotel, unlike others who could be staying miles away! As always, traffic is a problem, but if you make the most of the public transport in the area this won’t affect you anyway!