A former South Wales coal mine has beaten 60 entrants to win one of the UK’s biggest arts prizes - the £100,000 Gulbenkian Museum of the Year award.

Sir Richard Sykes, chair of the judges, said that Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales, “offers an exceptional emotional and intellectual experience.”

During tours given by miners, visitors are led down a 300ft (91m) mine shaft into tunnels that once produced 100,000 tonnes of coal a year.

Big Pit benefitted from a £7m redevelopment in 2004 and has since attracted more than 140,000 people.

The other finalists were Coventry Transport Museum; Time and Tide, the Museum of Great Yarmouth Life; and Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon.

Last year’s winner was the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Details: www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk