Coming back with a bang

With a giant free street party, gunfire, marching bands, parachutists, horses and rattling carriages, the biggest secret in London came out of the shadows for the first time in 300 years this weekend when the Woolwich Arsenal opened its gates to the public.

After 15 years of planning and fundraising and five of rebuilding, the once-decayed site hosted celebrations for the inauguration of Firepower, alias the Royal Artillery Museum.

It is the first part of a phased opening of what was London's biggest closed site - a small part of the gigantic military base at the heart of the British Empire which will be brought back to life over the next two years in a £40million regeneration.

The site was to have been unveiled in 1999, in parallel with Greenwich Peninsular developments which included the Dome. Delays meant that until this weekend it had in fact been open to the public only for the odd sponsored walk and to allow filming for TV programmes including London's Burning.

The site will be divided into four zones - residential, heritage, employment and commercial leisure - intended, in the words of the London Development Agency, "to aid the rejuvenation of Woolwich".

The £15million Royal Artillery Experience is the keystone of the Heritage zone - a history of the science and technology of blowing up things and people as efficiently as possible.

It begins with a "dark room" introduction called Field of Fire that seeks to put visitors into the centre of an earthshaking barrage. Other exhibits illustrate the history of artillery from the Roman Empire to the present day.

They include part of the Iraqi super gun, the Royal Artillery's 60 Victoria Crosses, and the gun responsible for the Arsenal's move from Moorfields - a faulty casting which exploded during a visit of dignitaries in 1716, killing 17 of them.

There is also an interactive gallery, in which visitors can see for themselves how good a gunner they would make in a computerised version of firing a light artillery piece.

"There is no hiding that we are dealing with the history of a destructive force," says Graham Jones, the Arsenal's head of marketing. "People will go home fully aware of the effects it has had and the effects on human beings."