The Natural Science Museum is located in an extension to the City Hall in central Durban. It is a museum about the earth, its history, and life on earth, both past and present.

The museum houses various exhibitions with the most accessible being those relating to the wide variety of animal life found in South Africa. Visitors to the museum can wander through hallways exhibiting stuffed animals and birds, insect collections including large numbers of butterflies and cockroaches as well as an exhibition of reptiles and amphibians. A tour of these various exhibits can add a lot of value before or after visiting a game reserve. It will add to your knowledge on wildlife and may provide you with an opportunity of studying a particular animal up-close of which you may only get a distant glimpse in a reserve - although it's always more satisfying seeing animals in the wilderness...

The museum has various research and educational programmes. It is one of the smallest of South Africa’s science museums and is the only one of its kind funded by a local authority – the eThekwini Municipality (Durban metropole). It is open to the public 363 days a year and admission is free. A coffee shop on the premises, the Waterhole, is run by the Museum Trust.

Upstairs from the museum, in the same building, is the Durban Art Gallery, which we strongly recommend for lovers of visual arts.