About Kensington Other districts go in and out of fashion, but the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, particularly the area to the south of Hyde Park, has been in vogue ever since royalty moved into Kensington Palace in the late seventeenth century. Aside from the shops around Harrods in Knightsbridge, however, the popular tourist attractions lie in South Kensington, where three of London’s top free museums — the Victoria and Albert, Natural History and Science museums — stand on land bought with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Since transformed from fields, farms and private estates into street after street of ornate Italianate terraces and grandiose red—brick mansions, it is now prime London real estate and among among the world’s most expensive.