When the Victoria and Albert Museum asked its visitors what "medieval" meant to them, the result was depressing: plague, war, religion, darkness, mud and – possibly thanks to some hazy memory of Blackadder's and Baldrick's cherished turnips – potatoes. However, the world conjured up by the £31.7m suite of 10 new galleries occupying an entire wing of the London museum looks very different.

The galleries have taken seven years to fill with more than 1,800 ravishing objects. In the central courtyard, light streams through the glass roof on to a fountain surrounded by sculptures from the gardens of kings and merchant princes.

The adjoining galleries blaze with colour from enamel and gold, jewels and tapestries, stained glass and ceramics.

"We want our visitors to take away with them a feeling of the luxury, the colour and the sophistication of this period," the museum's director, Mark Jones, said. "This was not a dark period in history."

This is the first time many of the objects have been on permanent display; others have been in storage for decades, such as the spectacular facade of a Tudor timber house that survived the great fire of London only to be torn down to make way for Liverpool Street station in the 19th century.

The new galleries, the most spectacular addition to the museum since the British Galleries opened eight years ago, complete the first phase of the £120m redisplay of the whole museum. They open to the public on Wednesday.