The Royal Mint has unveiled plans to let the public inside the highly-secured coin manufacturing facility for the first time in its 1,000-year history.
A £7.7m ($12.9m, €9.4m) purpose-built visitor centre is to be built at its headquarters in Llantrisant, south Wales, UK, with the aim of attracting up to 200,000 annual visitors. The Royal Mint said the centre would be of interest to overseas visitors because coins and medals for around 60 countries are manufactured there.
Construction will begin this spring, subject to planning permission, and is expected to be completed during 2015. Rio Architects is behind the plans.
Shane Bissett, director of commemorative coins and bullion, said the Ministry of Defence-protected site receives large numbers of requests to visit from members of the public every year.
“We have been exploring the opportunity of a visitor centre for some time. So, it gives us great pleasure to announce that this can now go ahead and people will be able to see the work of one of Britain's national treasures," he said.
The new attraction will feature a tour of The Royal Mint, offering visitors the chance to not only see how coins are designed and made, but to strike their own. The visitor centre features a range of static and interactive experiences and displays of rare and unusual coins and medals from the across the world.
A £2.3m ($3.87m, €2.79m) grant from the Welsh government has helped fund the overall cost of the project.
The Royal Mint moved to Wales in 1967, having previously been located on premises at London’s Tower Hill, and before that – for more than 500 years – at the Tower of London.
