Big Pit — Winner of the 2005 Gulbenkian Prize for Britain's Museum of the Year

Big news 300 feet underground in South Wales near Blaenafon: The Big Pit National Mining Museum, already recognized as a World Heritage Site, came first in this year's museum competition.

The museum (above) is an actual former coal mine where retired miners working as guides lead visitors on tours to show them what it was like to work the coal face.

It includes restored colliery buildings like the winding engine house, the blacksmith's workshop and the pithead baths, built as recently as 1939 and the first baths the miners had on the site.

The museum opened in 1983, then closed for major improvements several years ago: £7 million ($12,750,000) were spent before it reopened in February 2004.

Last year Big Pit had nearly 150,000 visitors.

Admission is free.

At the May 26 awards presentation the museum received £100,000 ($182,000) and an enamelled silver bowl designed by award–winning metalwork artist Vladimir Böhm.

A more detailed report is here.

[via artsdaily.com and the New York Times]