In the heart of Oxford’s transformed Ashmolean Museum money was exchanging hands. The foreign cash involved hardly represented a vast sum when set against £61m, the hefty bill for what has become the largest museum development in the country. But the transfer of numerous old coins represented the most golden of moments for Ashmolean director Christopher Brown and his staff.

For last Tuesday the first group of four galleries in the Ashmolean’s new extension was handed over to the museum. The scaffolding was gone, the floor covers removed to reveal oak flooring and the large new display cases put in place.

Currencies and coins from the Ashmolean’s world famous collection were fittingly the first items to be carefully put in place in the expensive showcases from Ghent in what will be known as the Money Gallery. Cases in some of the other galleries were soon being filled with textiles, scrolls and items ranging from ancient writing implements to heavy rune stones.

The building work has been going on since 2006, with the museum having to finally close in January. But Dr Brown believes the end is now in sight, with treasures beginning to come out of storage to take their place in one of the world’s great museums, which has somehow managed to reinvent itself.

“We call it Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time,” explained Dr Brown, as he proudly showed off the progress made since university vice-chancellor Dr John Hood undertook the topping-out ceremony last spring. He was describing the museum’s display strategy but the phrase neatly summed up the experience of taking a trip around Oxford’s newest attraction, which just happens to be the world’s first ever public museum.

The doors will not be opening to the public until November, but it is now possible to assess the scale of architect Rick Mather’s ambition that will create close to a 100 per cent more display space.

A large atrium running through the centre of the building, connecting all six storeys, is lit with large windows and roof lights, allowing natural light to filter vertically through the building to the lower ground level via inter-connecting galleries, some up to seven metres high.

The 39 galleries, including four new temporary galleries, are linked by a series of footbridges which form one of the most remarkable features of the building’s modern interior. And one of the bridges is also to have a central role in the Ashmolean’s recently launched public fundraising appeal.

People donating £50 or more will be able to see their name or dedication inscribed on what will be known as the Benefactors’ Bridge.

It seems quite an assortment of people have already taken the opportunity to become, albeit in a small way, part of the fabric of the new building.

One woman has celebrated a trip to the Arctic with an inscription, while a family made a dedication in memory of their grandparents because they could not afford a headstone.

Another family made a dedication to a young girl, born to an American mother and English father, who is buried in the United States. Her English family wanted to have some kind of public acknowledgement to the child in this country.

Many inscriptions, like the pieces in the Ashmolean itself, point to fascinating human stories. For example, one will read: “With thanks to Dr R.D. Lawrence 1892-1968 who I met in Harley Street, aged nine, who made it possible for me to cross this bridge of knowledge today.”

It was submitted by 72-year-old Simon Hogg, of Oxford, who saw the bridge as an opportunity to commemorate Lawrence, who, with the great novelist HG Wells, founded tthe Diabetic Association, with the aim of ensuring that diabetics had access to insulin whatever their financial situation. Mr Hogg believes he owes his life to Dr Lawrence, who had treated him many years ago in a London hospital.

The museum received a £15m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, making it one of the last institutions to receive such a huge sum from that body. The Linbury Trust, founded by the Sainsbury family in 1973, also committed £11.5m to the scheme.

The Ashmolean, however, is now faced with raising £13m itself to reach the £61m target, which will include a £4m endowment to help cover the additional running costs that it will now face.

The appeal is being carefully aimed close to home, with 62,000 appeal packs sent out to local residents. To mark the appeal’s launch, new photographs have been produced for the My Ashmolean My Museum campaign, featuring the actor Sir Ben Kingsley, the architect Rick Mather, and eight-year-old Oxfordshire girl Freya Darius-Nobes — their portraits representing themes from the new displays.

They will take their place in an outdoor photography exhibition that opened on Tuesday on the Ashmolean’s forecourt, showing a collection of 41 portraits taken by Theo Chalmers, which cleverly connect famous contemporary faces to the museum’s historic collections of art and antiquity.

Author Philip Pullman is pictured with the Canaletto painting View of Dolo on the Brenta Canal, to which he has alluded in his writing on Oxford’s canals and boatyards, including the trilogy, His Dark Materials.

Bettany Hughes, the author of a book on Helen of Troy who says visits to the Ashmolean inspired her to pursue a career bringing the stories of the classical world to a wider audience, is photographed holding a lekythos, a container for oil, dating from the fifth century.

Other photographs being exhibited feature the Inspector Morse novelist Colin Dexter and the actors Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox, who appear in Lewis, holding items relating to the imprisonment of the Oxford Protestant martyrs.

For each of the portraits, Chalmers wrote a short piece of prose on his subjects’ foreheads, referring to the Ashmolean items. The images are already adorning buses running between Oxford and London with the portraits all on display on the forecourt until October.

Walking across the forecourt, the director recalled his first impressions of the Ashmolean when he arrived as director 11 years ago when the main front door was closed. Visitors were obliged to enter through a door on the side of the forecourt. “Everyone passing saw the front doors were shut,” he said, shaking his head.

When the museum reopens in November, he promises the Ashmolean’s giant front doors will be open in their entirety for the first time since the Second World War.

He remembers, too, how winds had blown the roof off one of the huts lying behind the museum’s famous neo-classical frontage, built by Charles Cockerall in 1845.

The Evans Tram Sheds, as the huts were known, were created by one of Dr Brown’s own boyhood heroes, Sir Arthur Evans, the former keeper of the Ashmolean, remembered for his discoveries at Knossos, Crete.

Few have mourned their loss and we can assume that Sir Arthur would have approved of the radical new approach to display the collections, based on the simple idea that the different civilisations that have shaped modern societies did not develop in isolation, but as part of an inter-related world culture.

It means that the themed galleries explore the connections and activities common to different cultures.

The galleries now being handed back to the museum staff, for example, examine reading and writing and the representation of the human image, as well as money.

Entire floors of galleries are arranged chronologically, charting the development of the ancient and modern worlds, to highlight the strengths of the museum's collections, which span the civilisations of East and West and chart the aspirations of mankind from the Neolithic era to the present day.

For, among its treasures are the world's largest collection of Raphael drawings, the most important collection of pre-Dynastic Egyptian material in Europe, the only great Minoan collection in Britain, the greatest Anglo-Saxon collections outside the British Museum, and the foremost collection of modern Chinese art in the Western world.

For the first time the Ashmolean will have a purpose built education centre, with a separate entrance, and three new study centres, to meet the needs of both visiting school parties and scholars.

But you will have to go to the very top to appreciate one of the most striking features of the new building. The rooftop restaurant, which will be able to seat up to 90 people, is now taking shape, with caterer Benugo expected to run it.

The company created by Ben and Hugo Warner, who were brought up in Oxford, runs a number of restaruants in London, notably at the new St Pancras Station, and is the caterer at the Victoria & Albert Musuem.

The views of Oxford from the terrace are superb and are certain to attract thousands of people who have may have little hunger for Beneventum brooches or Japanese Imari porcelain.

There may still be 200 workers still on the site, but the director was already reflecting on those who will see the reopened museum. And some of those who will not. In the winter he attended the funeral of Paul Clark, the barrister and judge, who was, for a decade, the chairman of the Friends of the Ashmolean. He died of cancer at the age of 68.

“I will never forget the warmth with which he greeted my appointment and his excellent advice,” said Dr Brown. “How much I would have liked to walk with him through the new building in November.”