Discoveries: University of Cambridge Museums, Two Temple Place

Discoveries: Art Science and Exploration from the University of Cambridge Museums at London's Two Temple Place exhibition space is a grown up version of a trip to the natural history museum. 

Set in a splendid Victorian mansion, this is a multidisciplinary science show charting the aesthetics of knowledge and discovery through time – showing that it's not only what is discovered that's important, but how it's discovered. 

You can learn a lot about an age by looking at its philosophical, spiritual, and scientific instruments of interpretation. This show brings together the remarkable archaeological, anthropological and zoological collections of the eight University of Cambridge Museums for the first time to do just that. 

The treasures on view range from 19th century Ptolemaic maps of the universe, traditional eskimo snow goggles, and the geekily named 'Triwizard Tournament' Digital Optical module – a cosmological instrument which studies subatomic particles from 2400m below the South Pole ice. 

Perhaps the biggest must-see is Charles Darwin's Tinamou egg: the progeny of a South American bird that dates from the miocene epoch, over 5 million years ago. Brought back from his voyage on the HMS Beagle, it was presumed lost for years before being rediscovered in 2009. 

The show is essential viewing for anyone interested in the history of science, and will delight fans of curiosity cabinets and wunderkammers alike.

It’s also worth visiting Two Temple Place just to see inside this little architectural wonder. Open to the public while exhibitions are on, it’s a neo-Gothic mansion that was originally built William Waldorf Astor, owner of the Waldorf Hotel in New York, as a private refuge for himself and his family, and decorated by the finest craftspeople of the time. 

Although it was built in the Early Elizabethan style, it’s no orthodox example of the genre. It sports a number of modern and peculiarly American references including a weathervane by J. Starkie Gardner showing the 'Santa Maria', the boat in which Columbus discovered America, and a cherub using the telephone on one of two bronze lamp standards by British sculptor William Silver Frith.