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Image by Theophane Raballand
Set in the beautiful art nouveau building `The old England’, this museum guarantees a well spent afternoon. Various instruments, European and non European. are at display. Infrared headphones offer the possibility to hear extracts from the instruments you are viewing.
They collected a large sample of extracts for you to listen to, making a visit to this museum a feast for body and soul. In September until June concerts are organized there. These concerts make use of the enormous rare and ancient instruments in the collection.
Your visit is chronologically structured taking you to instruments and their sounds from ancient times until present day. Guided tours are also offered to give you a more thorough understanding of musical evolutions. Next to this rich collection of instruments the museum has a library where you can proceed your investigation of everything about music. It has a long history of collecting, renovating and preserving instruments that makes this museum extra spectacular.
There is also a shop where you can buy books, Cd’s and other music related products. Pictures and video extracts nicely put next to the instruments on display give you further insights. This is truly a museum where education, entertainment and conservation come together. Even if you don’t have time to visit this museum you can still visit the restaurant without paying for the entrance to the museum.
Musical instruments museum | Art & culture, Bars, Music, Restaurants (Lunch)
Hofberg 2 | Center | +3225450130
Tue – Fri 9:30 – 17:00, Sat – Sun 10:00 – 17:00
I’d heard about this place and intended to go for a while but never managed it until a recent trip to Brussels found me with a couple of hours free. It’s a wonderful and wacky experience and the people who say the sound devices (that are meant to be coordinated with numbered circles outside each exhibit) don’t work that well are just grumpy. It’s true that sometimes I’d be looking at a bunch of harps while being blasted by the sound of a million trumpets which made for some incongruous viewing, but that was all part of the fun! In fact, as there weren’t that many people around the day I went, I took advantage of unobserved moments by deliberately leaping from circle to circle and thus abruptly triggering track changes. I highly recommend this activity. Plus, the day I went there was a floor that was off the regular tour that I went onto anyway and was well rewarded by a charming and bizarre installation of a bunch of endive lettuces posed on a table, surrounded by really expensive microphones with a bunch of seats (empty) set up in front, as though for an audience. Everybody else pretty much ignored it, but I took a load of photos and was rewarded again, for sticking around, because about 15 minutes later, a soundtrack starts to come over the speakers, giving the illusion that the endives are singing, only it sounds like humans pretending to bark like dogs! It was hilarious and I loved it even more for the fact that there was no attempt made to explain this installation. I decided not to ask about it on the way out so it remains a wonderful mystery. I can’t promise the endives will be there but I can guarantee you’ll have an interesting time if you decide to visit this museum. The Magritte museum is across the way from it, so you could make it a day and do both.
If you’re one of those people that love to brunch.. the restaurant of MIM is your place! Every Sunday, there’s an open buffet brunch between 10 – 12.30, for a fixed price of 25€. Really worth trying out on a lazy sunday morning!