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Devon's two biggest museums have closed for refurbishment at the same time after being awarded large grants to fund improvements.

Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Queen Street is closed until 2010 andÌýwill see the biggest changes for a century, costing £15m.

The Plymouth City Museum is shut until May 2008 while it undergoes a £1.4m revamp that will transform the ground floor galleries.

What Plymouth Museum will look like

The funding represents significant national investment and will bring both museum's into the 21st century.

In Exeter, the city's Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) began its £15m modernisation programme in late 2007. The project will see the biggest structural change since 1890.

It will take until 2010 to restore the museum's architectural features, open up visitor access to the Roman wall and improve and extend the displays.

The museum has already used £2.2m of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to build the Exeter Ark – the most modern museum collection store in the UK.

"This is a 19th century building and it has lots of the problems of a 19th century building," explained RAMM director, Camilla Hampshire.

"Many of the services are quite Heath Robinson – they're quite eccentric.

"It's a wonderful building but it was beginning to act as a straight jacket for what we want to achieve. We need a building that will work in the 21st century."

RAMM is home to Gerald the giraffe

On the first floor, RAMM presents a voyage across the globe, exploring the diversity of life on earth.

This gallery - Introducing RAMM - acts as the main introductory gallery to the museum itself and the objects and information that lie at its core. It will also be the new 'home' for museum mascot, Gerald the Giraffe.

Plymouth City Museum is also undergoing big changes - with the most far reaching improvements for a generation.

"This is the first really significant investment in the refurbishment of the museum in 20 years," said Plymouth museum curator, Nicola Moyle.

"What the £1.4m really means is that for the first time, visitors coming to the museum will see a change in the way in which we present collections and stories."

Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery

Plymouth has received the funding from a variety of sources, including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Wolfson Improvement Fund.

The redevelopment concentrates on the ground floor, where work has already revealed some of the museum's original 1910 structure.

By May 2008, the refurbished ground floor will feature three galleries of Plymouth's history – Bringing the World to Plymouth (world cultures collections), Plymouth Uncovered (local archaeology) and Plymouth: Port, People and Place (social history).

Both museums will extend their existing outreach programmes to ensure continued public access to their services.

In Plymouth this will mean displays in libraries and a mobile Museum in Transit.

In Exeter, the museum will have a permanent display in the Central Library as well as a 'RAMM North' with collections and exhibitions at the museum in Barnstaple.