When you visit the British Museum's £100 million Great Court project, you will see a quite extraordinary transformation. The nation's prime cultural repository, visited by millions each year, is no longer a collection of awkwardly connected mid 19th century galleries. It has out-Louvred the Grand Louvre in Paris - always its greatest rival - to become a 21st century architectural destination in its own right. And - such is the British way - from the outside, you would scarcely know that anything had happened behind its august Ionic portico.
Millions upon millions of visitors each year - because the British Museum is immensely popular and free of charge - will find themselves wandering casually through the new South Portal into the luminous expanse of the Great Court. There, they will find themselves rooted to the spot. Gazing upwards, they will be transfixed in awe. The best architecture has always played this game of sudden revelation. And Lord Foster, architect of the Great Court, is a master of the game.
It is now eleven years since President Francois Mitterrand opened the glittering new heart of the Louvre, the famous glass pyramid in the museum's courtyard marking a vast underground circulation area. At a stroke, it made the huge old palace both easily navigable and very desirable. The British riposte, to be unveiled by the Queen on December 7, is just as radical, even more ingenious, and, with the geometrical tour de force of its vaulted latticework glass roof, arguably more dramatic. Designed by Lord Foster, Britain's single most internationally celebrated architect, it will set the seal on his reputation - despite the inevitable controversies that have dogged its building, and the well-publicised travails of his over-lively Millennium Bridge. Be assured: this is vintage Foster.
