Museum unveils stunning home for art treasures

One of the "world's greatest treasure collections", including St Thomas Becket's casket and Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, is being showcased in its new home, the Victoria and Albert Museum's new £32 million Mediaeval and Renaissance Galleries.

The 10 new galleries, which open to the public today, occupy an entire wing of the museum and boast more than 1,000 years of European artistic and social history - including chunks of buildings, huge sculptures and stained glass windows.

Highlights of the vast collection of more than 1,800 objects include da Vinci's notebooks, with an interactive display planned so that visitors can turn the pages on a nearby screen.

Masterpieces on show include what the museum described as "the largest and most splendid" enamelled casket dedicated to the murdered archbishop St Thomas Becket, dated at around 1180.