Useful things to know before your visit
Address: Albert Memorial, Southside of Kensington Gardens (opposite the Royal Albert Hall), South Kensington SW7. Website: royalparks.org
How much time do you need?
A typical visit to the Albert Memorial takes 10 minutes.
Which buses go to the Albert Memorial?
Bus routes 9, 10, 52, 70, 360 and 452 all stop close by.
Which is the closest train station?
The nearest station is South Kensington, which connects with the Circle District and Piccadilly lines. You can walk the ⅗ mile to the Albert Memorial in about 12 minutes.
Which other attractions are nearby?
These attractions are all within 15 minutes walk of the Albert Memorial: Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gardens, Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Kensington Palace and Brompton Oratory.
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Email My review of the Albert Memorial
I wonder how we’re going to be remembered when we die? I’ll probably just be a faded photo in the family album, one of those dog-eared pictures that fall behind the carrier bags under the stairs. Either that or a gravestone covered in weeds. If you’re famous you might get a stone statue covered in bird droppings. But Prince Albert was on a different level to us ordinary mortals because when he died of typhoid in 1861 Queen Victoria commissioned this.
Photo: londondrum.comThere’s a famous old story about him that says he didn’t want a fuss made after his death. “Don’t build me a statue, for chrissakes,” he said (I’m paraphrasing). “I don’t want anything grand.” So what did Victoria do? She honoured him with the kind of monument they usually give to kings and conquerors! If you visit Henry VIII’s marker in St. George’s Chapel (arguably the most consequential king in English history) then all he got was a flagstone in the floor. Winston Churchill got a stone slab in Westminster Abbey. I suppose you could make a case for Nelson having the granddaddy of statues, but even his is six feet shorter than Albert’s.
The marble Frieze of Parnassus
Photo: londondrum.comThe ribbon of marble that runs around the base is like a Who’s Who of world history with 169 people chiselled into it from Titian and Turner, Raphael and Rubens, to Dante and Shakespeare. You’ll find composers and poets on the south-side facing the Royal Albert Hall, famous painters on the east, sculptors on the west, and architects from Cheops to Christopher Wren on the north.
Statues, Sculptures & Mosaics
The statues on the inner corners represent agriculture, commerce, engineering and manufacturing, and the outer ones stretch out across the Empire with representatives from Africa, Asia, America and Europe.
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Then you’ve got a canopy of mosaics celebrating the arts through eight more figures – poetry gets King David and Homer, painting gets Apelles and Raphael, architecture gets King Solomon and Ictinus, and sculpture gets Phidias and Michelangelo. Above them are another eight statues symbolising the sciences of rhetoric, astronomy, geology, geometry, chemistry, medicine, philosophy and physiology.
Photo: londondrum.comEverything above that is too far away for my poor eyes to see, but if your eyesight is better than mine then you’ll find another stone set of beauties and a choir of golden saints and angels extolling the Christian virtues of faith, hope, charity, humility, fortitude, prudence, justice and temperance.
And seated right in the centre is a 14-foot high statue of Prince Albert himself, all gilded in gold and looking like a god. When I die this is how I want to be remembered.
The Albert Memorial appears in my one week in London itinerary
If you’re interested in Prince Albert then you might like to see where he lived with Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace
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What do you think? (3)
Ask a question, or share your experience of the Albert Memorial
J&M We came across this quite by accident whilst waiting for the V&A to open, when we decided just to have a quick look at the Royal Albert Hall beforehand. As we walked around the wonderful building you can imagine our surprise when we saw this for the very first time. What a wonderful surprise, and what a wonderful city! (reply)
Geoff It’s impressive but what did Albert actually do to deserve it (a genuine question) he wasn’t a monarch or a prime minister, he wasn’t a famous general that won a war, he was just a consort. Am I missing something? (reply)
↳Craig Hi Geoff. I think it had more to do with Queen Victoria’s love for him after his early death, than anything he did. Although he did achieve a lot of things. This entire area looks the way it does because of him. He organised the Great Exhibition which ended up funding the Natural History Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal Albert Hall. (reply)
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