Brussels Museum of Military History
Parc Du Cinquanteniere 3, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Visited in 2024
This is a brilliant museum – we’ll start there shall we.
To summarise the displays are split into areas, working from a Medieval hall, a hall covering the 1800’s, a hall showing off early firearms, a superb WWI hall, another one for WWII, a small selection of modern tracked vehicles, and a large hall with Avionic subjects.
I’ve split the photos up into separate files so that it’s easier to access whatever you’re interested in, although I do recommend a visit to the museum in person.
Whilst the Medieval and 1800’s displays are within glass display cabinets, the WWI and WWII displays have uniforms and some weaponry in similar display cases, but also larger items – a British Whippet, a diminutive French Renault and a Rhomboid tank along with a lot of artillery pieces that the visitor is able to walk around without barriers preventing the viewer from getting too close.
The small selection of AFV’s ( which was under renovation in 2024 when we visited, so a lot of the exhibits that would normally be on display were in storage ) and the large hall of Aircraft is similar to the WWI hall with exhibits that you can walk around, with the visitor able to get up close to the displays and in some cases go inside them.
Entry to the museum is around 12 Euros, and I’d allocate around four to five hours to enable you to have a good look around.
Whilst most capital cities can be a nightmare to drive around, Brussels seems to be relatively easy, there seem to be a lot of tunnels and once you figure out whether your next turn-off is coming up, and you need to be back on the surface streets, it’s very easy to get around.
Having taken a wrong turn ( OK I missed it really ) and ending up driving through the centre of Brussels to get to the museum, it was pleasantly surprising to see traffic flowing well, and very little evidence of jams along the route. Bearing in mind this was around 10am on a Thursday morning too.
Parking close by is pretty good too, it’s roadside payment meter, and unlike a lot of large cities, it’s not overly expensive. We were paying about 2 Euros per hour, which certainly doesn’t seem unreasonable.
The café is situated within the Aircraft display hall, and although not particularly large, is very reasonable price-wise, and serves very good food and drink.
Although I’m sure that everyone has his or her own favourite historical periods that are of interest, my focus was on the WWI hall - the selection of German and Prussian headgear being particularly impressive.
My only complaints really were the darkness of the WWII uniform displays. Getting decent photos to show correct colours for reference without resorting to the camera flash was almost impossible, and was a bit disappointing considering the breadth of items on display.
The other moan would be that whilst the displays have descriptions with them, they are only written in French or Dutch, there is no provision for the English speaker.
With that said, I dare say that most reading this could identify and give a good accounting of most of the items anyway, but for the person less well-read, it might be a bit of a disappointment.
The other period displays seemed so much better lit to enable the visitor to take photos.
I've split this article up, simply because the breadth of historical periods, linked to the huge amount of displays - a sample of which is within these articles, really does require a visit from anyone interested in military history. The reference sources for the modeller are huge.
Medieval to 1700
Whilst the Medieval hall is limited compared to the other historical display halls, it is well worth a look around, and there are some very impressive examples of arms and armour.
1700 - 1900
