Musée de la Vie Wallonne
- October 21, 2007
- Rated 5 of 5 by
baroudeur2004 from Liege, Belgium
Located in Hors Château, the Museum of Walloon Life is ideally located between Place Saint-Lambert and the Hillsides of the Citadel in the lovely Cour des Mineurs, next to the Church of Saint-Antoine (currently being renovated). When the museum reopens in 2008, the entry will probably vary between 2.50 and 3.80 euros.
From the information I could gather, the new museum will be separated into five themes: discovering Wallonia and its inhabitants, economic life, social life, daily life, spiritual life and trainings. Other spaces will complete the site: the guillotine room, the glazed gallery equipped with multimedia tools and a wing reserved to temporary exhibitions.
I have visited the old museum several times with my school (I attended a college in the same street). One century ago, the idea of being interested in the lodging, the clothing, the work, the food or the people's beliefs was revolutionary: only the facts and gestures of the important people were worthy to enter in history. The first collections were collected in April 1914. From 1923, the museum was lodged in a dependence of the Curtius Museum (Musée Curtius) on Quai de Maestricht. This situation lasted until 1970.
At the end of the 1960s, the Belgian Government decided to renovate the ancient convent of the Minimes Brothers (seriously damaged by a bomb in 1944) to finally offer an adequate space to the Museum of Walloon Life. The first rooms opened their doors to the public in 1970.
During the 20th century, this conservatory of professions, customs, arts and popular traditions did not stop enriching its collections thanks to the investigations and the collection of objects, sometimes through purchases, but most often through donations. Nowadays, the Museum of the Walloon Life houses some 100,000 objects, more than 100,000 photographs and close to 60,000 documents. Besides the spaces reserved to the exhibitions, the museum had a consultation room, an animation service and a Theater of Liege Puppets (which will still be available in the new Museum).
With time, new scenographic tools appeared. In the meanwhile, the public’s habits had changed and they had gone from the simple folk interest for customs or dialects to a need of a more fundamental understanding of the world they were coming from, or even to an identity quest.
It is for this reason that the persons responsible for the Museum of Walloon Life undertook a renovation of the collections presentation, and also are striving to make it a society museum accessible to anyone (from Liege or not).
This museum is the perfect place to discover the ancient way of life of Liege inhabitants when Liege was still an independent Prince-Bishopric (between 972 and 1789).It is where I have learnt more about my ancestors and how they lived. A must while in Liege!
From journal Around the Fortified Walls of Liege