The Maritime Museum in Swansea closed its doors on Sunday, after 25 years, to make way for a new National Waterfront Museum which is set to cost just under �30m

Work on the new building is due to start early next year and is part of the council's attempts to make Swansea one of the top waterfront cities in the UK.

This will be a museum for Wales and we should be very proud

Deputy council leader Council Robert Francis-Davies

The city was chosen over three years ago as the location for the national museum after a nationwide search to replace a developing site in Cardiff.

The Grade II listed building, which was built as a warehouse in 1904, will be incorporated into the new glass-fronted building.

The 20,000 exhibits which are stored at the marina site will be put into storage for two years while the new site is built.

When completed the national museum will have about 200,000 exhibits but there will also be interactive activities with the emphasis on visual designs.

One of the themes in the museum will be the industrial revolution and how machines propelled Wales on to the world stage as a great industrial nation.

Lottery funding

Deputy leader of Swansea Council Robert Francis-Davies said: "We have got a huge story to tell and I think we under sell ourselves.

"I think that we should be selling Wales rather than individual places.

"This will be a museum for Wales and we should be very proud."

The development is the largest of its kind in Wales since the �20m National Museum extension project in Cardiff in the 1980s.

The �10.69m awarded to the project represents the largest single Heritage Lottery Fund grant made in Wales.

Building work on the new museum will begin in early 2003 and doors are expected to open in 2005.

The new-look centre will make use of the existing building and a new site will be built alongside it, next to Swansea Leisure Centre.

The former Maritime Museum in Cardiff

The new maritime museum will come under the control of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales and end years of uncertainty about a home for the national collection of artefacts.

In June 1999, the Welsh Office rejected criticism of the demolition of the Cardiff Bay site in a damning report by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee.

The Cardiff maritime museum had hosted a number of exhibitions, including a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the car in Wales.

It held permanent exhibits illustrating the history of Wales's industrial docklands and coal mining in the Valleys.

The collection has been housed at Nantgarw near Cardiff since the closure.