NHM: stairs up to the Sequoia

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These are the stairs up from the first floor galleries up to the second floor where the Giant Sequoia is found (top centre of the photograph). Not that many people seem to get that far up in the museum, but it really is a magnificent specimen and worth the effort: it is a chunky cross section of the tree, and is labelled with a timeline of when it formed its rings (with the year and key current events)... It was 1300 years old at the time of its death, so witnessed the start of Islam (in the 7th Century CE), the founding of the papacy in Rome, the Norman Conquest (it was 500 years old by that stage), the birth of Shakespeare and Galileo (at which point the Sequoia was 1000 years old...). The rest, as they say, is history.

The second floor is also a good place for architectural shots: monkeys on arhces, the Sequoia's view of the hall, stairs down from the Sequoia, arch and window details...

This photo is an HDR composite (for a change), but I think it really shows off some of the details of the architecture: the arches, the ceiling panels, the varicoloured tiles, the animal details... The stairs themselves are rather satisfying.