Flanders Field Museum, Ieper

Since the seventies there has been a small museum that told the story about the Ieper Saillant and the tragedy that took place in these Flanders Fields. It grew out above the average war museum (most collections of certain war memorabilias) as it makes you experience the drama at the hand of documentairy films, texts, maquettes, historical things but especially at the hand of diorama's showing happenings of the people that lived in this hell on earth. The soldiers, the nurses and doktors, the locals and of various nationalities. The 14-18-generation is dying, but this museum keeps the message (warning) alive. The clear statement that the museum hands over to us: war settles nothing and war only knows loosers.

Open:
from 1-4 until 30-9 every day from 10:00 'til 18:00 hours
from 1-10 until 31-3 (except from X-mas until mid Januari) every day from 10:00 'til 17:00 hours - closed on Mondays

This long tip was written in French and separately in English at a time where VT limited the number of characters.

Ce musée situé depuis 1998 dans la magnifique Halle aux Draps d'Ypres est consacré aux victimes de la première guerre mondiale.
D'abord la ville de Ypres dont aucun édifice ne dépassait le mètre à la fin de la guerre à l'exception du beffroi dont ci-joint une photo d'époque. Ensuite les habitants d'Ypres qui à partir de mai 1915 durent abandonner leur ville totalement rasée pour n'y retourner qu'en 1919 pour la reconstruire en habitant provisoirement dans des baraques en bois.
La reconstruction de la halle aux draps ne fut terminée qu'en 1965.
Puis les soldats dont près de 500 mille moururent dans les batailles du saillant d'Ypres.

Le musée est surtout basé sur des évocations audiovisuelles remarquablement bien faites avec des kiosques interactifs qui permettent aux visiteurs d'approfondir certains thèmes.
Le musée est donc surtout axé sur le côté humain plus exactement inhumain de la guerre, pour utiliser le terme juste l'effroyable boucherie que fût la guerre de 1914-1918.

Le côté technique d'armement est moins développé et ici un musée comme le Musée de l'Armée au Cinquantenaire à Bruxelles complète celui d'Ypres.
Notons parmi les horreurs techniques de cette guerre que c'est à Ypres que fût utilisé pour la première fois en avril 1915 le chlore comme gaz de combat, en juillet de cette même année furent utilisés les premiers lance flammes et en juillet 1917 le gaz moutarde appelé Ypérite.

Impossible de ne pas sortir ému de ce musée.

Visiting the Flanders Fields museum first brings you to the rebuild Lakenhal, the biggest building at Ieper dominating the Market square.
On the first floor you are introduced to overwhelming war impressions.

The Museum is named after a poem by Canadian military doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, 1872-1918:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Opening times:
April-Mid November: Weekly 10AM-6PM
Mid November-March: Tu-Su 10AM-5PM

Entrance price: Euro 8.00

I won't repeat what others have said - I agree with almost everything. I'll just add that one of the reasons that this museum is so special is that, as well as showing what things were like, displaying objects and explaining history, it has a very, very clear moral meaning - the horror of the war. I found the audio-visual room, in particular, absolutely shattering.

If I had children of school age, I might well bring them on a trip over to Belgium just to see this museum.

” In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

This is an incredible Museum to visit.
I had no idea what to expect as we went through the elegant court yard of the Cloth Hall - looking for tell tale signs of where the reconstruction took over from the few remaining, original stones of this historic building.
For this ancient Hall,and all the town centre, were reduced to rubble and dust.

With our entrance ticket we also received a small card to be placed in a computer-like machine that would give us an identity - the screen told me I was a young Jeanne, a Belgian woman sent, with her two children, to Canada at the outbreak of war in 1914. I would only find out at the end of the visit what happened to "me", my children and my soldier husband.
I did not know that I could have followed a time-line in this life at computer points throughout the tour.

It is very difficult to begin to describe this museum.
Much - very effective - use is made of photographs, moving images, greatly magnified scripts, often accompanied by audio readings and dramatic interpretations of the written words. Well known poems from WW1, letters from unknown soldiers and from war time commanders and politicians.
The emotional impact of the history related in these innovative and interactive way cannot be understated. As we went around I observed the reactions of a party of Canadian school children aged maybe15/17. To begin with they were high spirited, slightly boisterous but, always under the care and supervision of their teacher,their mood soon changed - a quiet realisation of history they were feeling here and the to shock, horror and pity of it all.
Towards the end of the museum tour you are given an option to take a door and forego the audio-visual representation of the battlefield. Only those with young children did.

On your way out do pick up the free booklet - A guide to the written quotations.

So what happened to me, Jeanne, in Canada?
My children were often ill; we were all unhappy and poor. We returned to Belgium as soon as we could after the war to live with my parents. My husband had been killed in1918. I died in 1922.
I hope my aging parents were able to care for my two little girls.

2 more images

There is a pile of information here at VT about this museum....I wont duplicate the information but I would certainly recommend that you budget time for this MUST SEE EXPERIENCE...the presentation of the Media exhibitions are stupendous and the impact of visiting this Museum is huge!

Ive seen or read somewhere...." see it...smell it'...in fact its true...the musty smell of ages seems to permeate some of the artifacts and the collection as a whole...

If you've not read others interpretations about this museum Ill tell you one interesting feature...as you enter just about where you pay for entrance there is an automated machine that will spit out a paper with a bar code and the name of a person that really lived and possibly died here in Ieper before and or during the war...throughout the museum there are locations where you insert the paper and it will open a screen with real life details of the person's experience here during the conflict. The person that I received was named Jacobus Arnoldus Winters...The following is a little about him....

"On October 3, 1910 he was summoned to his military service. He was assigned to the 11th Line Regiment and did his military service Beverlo. March 14, 1912 he waved after 18 months service, is reduced. But not for long, because 2-12 June 1912 he was called back for 10 days. In 1913 he was recalled for the big maneuver. Then followed a call by 2-12 June 1914. On July 29, 1914 he was called to Liege for the Great War"

DONT MISS this museum if you are able to spend time in Ieper....

A brilliantly executed museum, entirely unmissable and intensely moving.

Even if you have no personal link with the First World War, or with the men who died in it, you will learn so much.

No 'dry' glass cases here. No concern with pomp and ceremony. No 'glitz and glamour' of war.

Just what it was like for the men.

'The old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria more' is so very thoroughly undermined.

1 more image

This museum is an excellent place with sound effects and audiovisual prompts.
It offers a fantstic insight to the part played by Ieper and explains the run up to the the first world war and the devestation of the war and the the post war period.
The 8 Euro entrance fee also includes entrance to the other museums in the city.