K is for... Knock out ...n ...Knowledge ...

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

K is for Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is a botanical park, or more correctly the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world renowned park and a World Heritage site. It was initiated by Princess Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales and the mother of King George III (whose reign has come to be defined by two main historical events - the American Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States, and the Regency brought about by his mental illness).  Anyway, Princess Augusta started a 9 acre botanic garden in the pleasure grounds of Kew in 1759 which has grown to 300 acres and become the UNESCO site we know today (here's a brief timeline). It is the largest botanical garden in the world and has the most diverse collection of plants, housing over 50,000 living plants and 7 million preserved specimens in the herbarium. Kew also has its own  fascinating A-Z btw, have a peek here.

I'd been planning and plotting to go to Kew since the late 90s, but there are so many things to do and see in London that I never made it to the Gardens till 2018. It is totally a knock out visitor attraction and there are sub-attractions within the attraction to boot. I've just been on a repeat visit early this month. Spring in the gardens is beyond awesome. Tulips and cherry blossoms and camellias and a gazillion others all in bloom. 

As far as museums go, Kew has several separate botanical museums and gallery spaces - Museum 1 is near the Palm House and houses collections on economic botany including tools, ornaments, food and medicines. The Marianne North Gallery and Shirley Sherwood Gallery both showcase botanical art, the former dedicated to Marianne North's work and the latter exhibiting both classic and contemporary art. Here is a guide to the Marianne North Gallery. Marianne challenged the idea of painting flowers/botanicals in the studio as was common in her time and went out to paint plants in their natural setting. 

Marianne North Gallery at the Kew Gardens. This Gallery
first opened  in the 1880s. It  displays the botanical paintings
of Marianne North, the daughter of a MP and a widely travelled
lady from a time when women didn't travel much. It's the only
art space dedicated to a single artist in England.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery, which is connected to the Marianne North Gallery,  has a collection of more than 1000 paintings of 300 artists, from 36 countries.  

Apart from these art spaces, the Kew Palace, the Queen's Cottage and the Queen's Garden are of historical significance and/or monuments in their own right. So are the temples and structures such as the Great Pagoda and the Ruined Arch. 

The Great Pagoda built in 1762.

Flowers at Kew, the Botanical Brasserie is in
the background. Summer 2018. 

Flowers at Kew, from the Great Border Walk.
Spring 2026. 

Flowers at Kew, Spring 2026.

The Kew Gardens are a top rated attraction and though the travel time from central London is around half an hour or so,  Kew gets over a million visitors annually.  (Hyde Park, also a Royal Park and more importantly, more accessible as it is located in the heart of the city and has no entry fee, unlike Kew, gets around 13 million visitors in a year). 

The Ruined Arch built in 1759-60.

Kew Gardens have a comprehensive website detailing all the various buildings, structures, plant groups and different aspects of economic botany that might be of interest to visitors physical  and virtual. The herbarium is mostly digitised and available to researchers.  Kew is one of the most important botanical knowledge resources used by scholars and conservators worldwide, apart from being a delightful tourist attraction and a family picnic spot. Read more about Kew by clicking the link here. 

K is also for Karnak

Karnak is a massive Pharaonic era temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor, Egypt consisting of several sprawling structures. These were a part of the monumental city of Thebes, the capital city of Ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and the New kingdom periods. The earliest  construction of Karnak has been dated to around 2055 BCE. The temple has been added to  from then on till Roman times, so Karnak has continued to expand over a period of 2000 years. It consists of several shrines to different gods/goddesses, pylons and hypostyle halls. 

Colossi of Pharaoh's at the temple entrance

Obelisk inside Karnak. Installed by Hatshepsut, btw.
The tourist chap gives an idea of the scale to which
the Ancient Egyptians built. Kewl or what?

The avenue of Rams. 

There are four main precincts in Karnak - the precincts of Amun-Re (the top god. The protector of Pharaohs, the king of the gods fused from the invisible power of the sun and the wind), Mut (mother goddess and the consort of Amun Re), Montu (the god of war, depicted as a falcon-headed or bull-headed man) and the temple of Amenhotep IV. The last was a fascinating chap - he changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten and founded the first ever monotheistic religion by abandoning the pantheon of Egyptian gods to worship solely the sun-god Aten.  Incidentally, all Pharaohs were considered divine, gods in their own right. They were the living reincarnation of the son of the sun god Re and were the intermediaries between the gods and human, keeping order in the world through their divine powers. Anyway, I digress. Coming back to Karnak, only the largest precinct - that of Amun Re is open to the public, the rest are either being restored or not safe to view.  

The ruins of Karnak are considered an open air museum and are the second most visited Ancient Egyptian site after the Giza Pyramids.  I've visited Karnak multiple times, however, there are photos only from the visit in 1998. The other times I was there for the Son et Lumiere or the light was poor and so no snaps. 

K is also for Konark

Konark is a ruined sun temple located in the eastern coast of India, in Odisha, an overnight journey from my hometown in Kolkata.  It  was built around 1250 CE and is recognised as an iconic example of Odisha (also known in medieval times as Kalinga) temple architecture. showcasing intricate stone sculpting skills. The original temple consisted of two parts a tiered pyramidal structure at the front with the main temple tower behind and rising far above it. Today only the former building remains. The temple complex also included other buildings such as the naat mandapa or the dance hall.

The pyramidal temple structure is built in the form of  a chariot - Surya Dev or the sun god in Indian mythology travels the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses (7 colours of the rainbow, 7 days of the week - that number is not a coincidence!) There are 24 wheels of the chariot, each with eight major spokes, also symbolic of time measurement on the Indian scale (a day is divided into 24 hours and  8 prahara, each roughly 3 hours). The entire plinth of the temple is carved with animal. human, and floral motifs, depicting mythological tales, scenes from ordinary life, musicians, hunters, women applying makeup or wringing their wet hair and so on. Among them are also maithuna figures - couples engaged in ritual sex. The detail and finesse of the sculptures are mesmerising. 

The Konark temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site and draws thousands of visitors daily - I was one of them in 2013. Read more about Konark by clicking the link here. 

The wheel of the chariot.

The part that still stands - the chariot of the sun god. 

One of the statues of the deity.

A women waiting for her husband/lover at the door. 

A pillar from the dance hall.

Did you know that around 400 specimens kept in the herbarium at Kew were collected by Charles Darwin himself on his Beagle voyage? I kind of keeled over in awe when I read that.

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Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026