I visited the Birmingham attraction opening after nearly five years and my heart ached

"There you are!" I said to Lucifer when I strolled into the Round Room at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG). "I've missed you!"

I wasn't fraternising with the Dark Deceiver, you'll be pleased to know. I was standing in the shadow of Sir Jacob Epstein's two-tonne bronze archangel who, while electrics were fixed all around him, the lifts renovated, the roof updated and the heating upgraded, has been patiently waiting for our return.

Like the re-fixed pretty tiled floors and the freshly-cleaned glass roof panels, Lucifer feels like part of the fabric of the place. It's a place I was chuffed to be back in given it's been mostly closed (with the exception of a brief Commonwealth Games hurrah) since the Covid pandemic in 2020.

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While some museums can feel like an exhibition of what we own, the BMAG feels more like a display of who we are. Pictures on the Round Room walls made me happy, including an Edward Steel Harper light-flooded painting of the Guillotine Lock at Liffords Lane in Kings Norton and a view over Tividale, the Black Country and Sandwell Valley from atop Darby's Hill at dusk (painted by Robert Perry in 2006).

Over the Bridge Gallery, filled with Arpita Shah's portraits celebrating young South Asian women from Birmingham and the wider West Midlands, I popped my head in the Pixel Studio, where Pogus Caesar's film The Tiny Spark was explaining more about the Handsworth Riots. Benjamin Zephaniah's blue plaque is there, too.

If I'd got a babby with me, I'd have pulled into the buggy park in Wild City, a gallery that explores the animals and wildlife that share Birmingham with us. There's a smashing green and wild little soft play space there for kids to burn off energy and explore, as well as plenty of seating and a coffee machine, for parents who don't want to spend money in the Tea Room. I thought that was a lovely touch, as was the artwork all around the space, made by Brummie children from city schools.

It was in the Made In Birmingham exhibition where I really felt connected, though. It unlocked that same kind of magic I felt when I watched the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony. Pride, I guess you'd call it.

"We're England's second city, but often fly under the radar," a sign reads. "Loved and misunderstood, appreciated and overlooked."

It's this complexity that's explored in the gallery. Is being from Birmingham important to us? Or are we indifferent? Is our architecture hideous or heritage?

There are elements that celebrate the city's unsung heroes, the ordinary and the run-of-the-mill. There are nostalgic nods to the past, Soho Mint coins, the massive HP Sauce sign and an original table from the Bull Ring cafe. In everything, I could see us.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery reopens

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And then, the feature that made my heart ache with joy. Photographs of regular Brummies, shot on the street, all forming part of a 'family gallery' on a living room wall filled with 'treasures'; a sofa bed from someone called Aftab Rahman, slept on by visiting relatives; a patchwork housecoat made by someone called Thelma Thomas's mom in 1945; Joan Walker's tea set, brought home as a souvenir from China; an old calendar from East Meadway Chinese Takeaway in Kitts Green; a 1980s gas fire.

Museums, in my mind, have long been spaces in which to boast about all the things we've coveted, but not earned. Art we didn't make and treasures we have no legitimate claim over.

But Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, I thought, as I perused the local goodies in the vibrant gift shop, is really ours.

Thank the sweet heavens it's back. And that goes for you too, Lucifer.