Natural History Museum

Alfred Waterhouse's terracotta cathedral to nature has stood on Cromwell Road since 18 April 1881, and after hours the whole building becomes a private venue. Hintze Hall is the room everyone comes for: Romanesque arches, the great stone staircase, and Hope, the blue whale skeleton, suspended overhead. The Museum takes 1,200 for a reception here, 650 for dinner, or 450 for a dinner dance, and it is candid about what the hall is used for, listing dinner dances, awards ceremonies and fashion shows among its regular events. The adjoining North Hall can be added for after-dinner dancing.

Beyond it the estate is genuinely varied. Earth Hall sits beneath a vast Earth sculpture, reached by an escalator that runs up into it, and holds 400 standing or 200 for dinner and dancing. The Darwin Centre's glass atrium is bright and modern where the Waterhouse building is dark and carved, opening onto a courtyard for 350. Smaller rooms have real character of their own: Earth's Treasury and its cases of royal gemstones, the Images of Nature gallery, the Anning Rooms tucked into the turrets with views over London, and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, available October to July.

This is a dry-hire venue, and that is the thing to understand before planning anything here. You take the space alone; catering, décor and production, including sound and lighting, come through the Museum's approved supplier list, which is a closed list rather than an open one. There is no installed sound system and no DJ booth. Nothing runs in the daytime either: suppliers get in from 18.00, when the doors close to the public. Standard hire runs to midnight and can extend to 01.00, 02.00 or 03.00.