The Museum of London is the largest development since the museum opened at the Barbican in 1976. The modern galleries, which closed three years ago, are on the lower level of the museum. The collection covering the 1789-1914 period was redisplayed in 2000, but the remainder dated back to 1976.

Altogether 7,000 objects will be presented in the modern galleries. These are in three main rooms, covering successive periods: Expanding City (1666-1850), People’s City (1850-1950) and World City (1950-today). In addition, the Lord Mayor’s Coach, a highlight of the collection, is being displayed in a new space that is visible from the street through a large window. There will also be an area for changing displays of contemporary art.

Although it has taken three years, at a considerable cost, director Jack Lohman stresses that the modern galleries cover half the museum. It has been “a major development, dealing with a 1970s building and redisplaying a very large number of objects”.

The main backer has been the Heritage Lottery Fund, which provided £11.5m. Three funders gave £1m each: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Corporation of London and the Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation (Mortimer Sackler died on 24 March). The Clore Duffield Foundation provided £900,000. The museum’s running costs (£26m a year) are provided by the City of London and the Greater London Authority.

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The Vatican Museums boast one of the world’s greatest art collections, they are a gigantic repository of treasures from antiquity and the Renaissance, all housed in a labyrinthine series of lavishly adorned palaces, apartments, and galleries (9 miles long) leading to the Sistine Chapel.

The Vatican Museums occupy a part of the papal palaces in the Vatican City enclave in Rome, built from the 1200s onward. From the former papal private apartments, the museums were created over a period of time to display the vast treasure trove of art acquired by the Vatican. The Vatican Museums trace their origins to one marble sculpture, purchased more than 500 years ago. The sculpture of ‘Laocoön’, the priest who, according to Greek mythology, tried to convince the people of ancient Troy not to accept the Greeks’ “gift” of a hollow horse, was discovered 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo Buonarroti, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery. On their recommendation, the pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The pope put the sculpture of Laocoön and his sons in the grips of a sea serpent on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.

Since then, the museums have grown and expanded, and now consist of a number of different buildings within the Vatican Enclave, including the Gregorian Egyptian Museum, Gregorian Etruscan Museum, the Pio-Clementine Museum, the Chiaramonti Museum, the Braccio Nuovo (New Wing), Gregorian Profane Museum, Pio Christian Museum (with the Christian and Hebrew Lapidary), Pinacoteca (picture gallery), Missionary-Ethnological Museum, Sacred Museum (formerly part of the Vatican Library), Vatican Historical Museum (Lateran Apostolic Palace) along with displays of tapestries, ceramics, miniature mosaics, and classical and modern religious arts in the Vatican Palaces and Chapels that are also open to the public. There are 54 galleries, or “salas” in total, with the famous Sistine Chapel, notably, being the very last sala within the Museum.

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