This museum has things going back to the 1400s. Very well preserved and interesting history about…read morea famous wealthy person. It's a must see for history buffs.

This museum is a gorgeous interlude showing the history of Bruges over time as well as medieval…read morehistory in general. Definitely worth checking out for anyone who enjoys history and/or art. One pleasant surprise is the balcony on an upper floor that provides a very nice view of Bruges! You also can peek into the neighboring church in the way that the wealthy family who once lived here used to do--from their private oratory.

A well laid out and inviting museum that allows you to get up close to some of the best artowrks by…read morethe Flemish masters. Van Eyck and Bosch are represented, as well as a smattering of post-modern artists from the 20th century. I enjoyed how each room represented a particular artistic movement chronologically. A nice way to spend 90 minutes or so.

Flemish art overload. Allow 1-3/4 hours. Each room had multi-lingual explanatory cards (a great…read moreidea). + padded benches €30 for 2

I enjoyed my visit here. I recommend buying tickets online in advance so you don't need to wait in…read moreline or wait longer to enter if the place fills up (which that happened to me). Entrance gives you a guided tour in a variety of languages that was entertaining for all. I enjoyed being able to walk around the grounds and see most of the place. The views up top were also nice. Great way to spend about two hours of your time and soak in some castle time.

Super good experience to see the inside of a medieval castle of Gent. Only thing was it was a…read morelittle creepy when I was the only individual and parts of the castles. But super fun experience and very interesting walk throughout the castle. Tickets are €13 which is pretty affordable and helps support the little city of Gent. You're also able to get an audio guide through the gift shop if you are interested. It's pretty interesting and a good way to spend a couple hours learning about the history of Gent.

This gets three stars for being the only museum of Gent's history. I did learn quite a bit, but I…read morefound the setup to be very frustrating. I got the audio tour since I don't speak Flemish. Unfortunately, it turned out that for the most part, the audio tour just replicates the main placards in each room that are already in English. For the other pieces with audio excerpts, the tour is organized very poorly, where sometimes it just describes an object, and other times, the number is near a specific object, but the description is for the entire room. This really could have been done better. The woman at the front desk was very adamant that I lock up my bag, even though this didn't seem to be mandatory policy for the museum, and they charge for the lockers. Overall, this was not a great experience.

Regardless of the content of the collection, this is an all star museum. The galleries are…read morewelcoming, visually stimulating, creative, and interactive. I learned a lot about Gent (mostly from the interactive maps), and felt immersed in the story of the place throughout the visit. The biggest drawback was that all of the labels are in Dutch so it wasn't always easy to know much about the objects I was looking at. On the flipside, I wasn't expecting there to be much English and the fact that all of the large wall panels are in English made the trip very informative and allowed for me to follow along through the course of history. As an added bonus they have free wifi and a really great little cafe with outdoor seating.

The Design Museum was mentioned in a New York Times article about Gent that came out shortly before…read moremy trip to Belgium. I bookmarked it because we were planning to spend a full day in town. While I do enjoy a variety of museums, this particular one didn't really hold my interest. That's not to say it won't hold yours! If you're someone who loves a behind the scenes look at how things are made, or you want to know about different textiles and other materials, furniture design, etc. you will love this place. I saw some interesting things in an exhibition about fibres and plastics, but the museum as a whole didn't leave me wanting more. To each their own!

Right off the bat, I will admit I am not much of a "design" type. Certainly I have a style, and I…read moreknow what I admire, but maybe its not necessarily what is hip or up to the standards of the design community. That said, I also don't necessarily see why some things are so special when they don't appeal to me. But art is subjective, so I just have to remember it's always a matter of taste. As for the Design Museum in Gent, well, it's pretty fantastic. I visited when two specific exhibitions were on display: Pieter De Bruyne (Pioneer of Postmodernism) and Destrøy/Design (A selection from the collection of the Frac Nord-Pas de Calais). Both I liked, for different reasons, but the one thing they had in common was that they made the viewer think critically about the art. There is also a permanent exhibition, which I wasn't as fond of. Because it was all in Dutch, it was hard for me to figure out what the "point" was, or the common thread holding things together. A few pieces here and there caught my attention, but mostly I breezed through it. Still, if there is a special exhibit here, I recommend stopping by. I spent maybe 30-45 minutes here, but people who are more art-minded might linger through the four floors even longer.

Nice setup, with informative plaques. It's not crowded, and the museum takes you through the…read moreexhibition in a way that creates a good flow. It's well worth the money (9euros per person for adults). On the down side, it's not wheelchair or walkerframe friendly. Bonus tip: you can get tickets for the witch "museum" there too.. that too, is super cool, and right next to the torture museum

We loved the torture museum. Shocked at what was done thru the years. 20 euro for 3 adults…read more Probably spent 45 minutes here.

Terrific museum We spent the best part of a rainy Saturday…read moreafternoon in this surprisingly good art museum. There was an extensive and varied collection of art and it was terrific value at €7. It would have been great if there had been some information in English.

I'm going to be very upfront in the beginning of this review, when I arrived at Palais des Beaux…read moreArts I was pretty burnt out with museums at this point, it was extremely cold, raining, and we were waiting in a line outside for like twenty minutes so the start to this experience was pretty miserable. Once we got into the building and through the security checkpoint, you could tell right away that this place was pretty beautiful. The building itself is 3 stories and each floor has something a little bit different to offer you. We headed down first and spent some time looking at the statues which were absolutely incredible, followed by the second floor which was a mixture of different pieces of art and a dome style room you could sit on beanbags and watch something. The main event of the show was upstairs where I couldn't even estimate the insane amount of paintings that fill the walls of the different colored rooms. The rooms themselves are all tall and covered from floor to ceiling with such incredible pieces, and everything you think you are done suddenly the red painted rooms turn into white rooms or green rooms and it just keeps going, it was truly remarkable. Overall, the Palais des Beaux Arts was a fantastic place to spend an hour or so learning about French art. Did I leave some stuff out? Yeah, because this was like my 23rd museum and at some point they start blending together. I loved how diverse the art here was and really did enjoy walking around, I highly recommend checking this place out if you are in Lille.

This place is magnificent! Came here for the Week-End Familial for L'exposition of Degas Sculpteur…read more Throughout my years of Art History, none of my professors elaborated on the controversy revolving Edgar Degas' work. I have seen Degas work many times and his most notable sculpteur La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans lives at at Musée D'Orsay, which I have seen there and now here. I didn't know ballerinas back then were considered lower class, since the girl's family would push them to do ballet in hopes to catch an eye of the wealthy. It's almost a form of pedophile...actually it is! Degas also made this ballerina have a face of criminals. So a lot of people weren't fans of him. Moving on out of Degas, this Musée isn't magnificent because of Degas pieces...it's breathtaking because the Philanthropist kept the look and feel of La Piscine. The swimming pool was constructed between 1927 and 1932 by the Lille architect Albert Baert. It closed as a swimming pool in 1985, and was remodelled as a museum by the architect Jean-Paul Philippon, opening in 2000. A modern entrance building, special exhibition space and garden were constructed within the roof-less shell of an adjoining textile factory. The museum's permanent collection has its origins in 1835, when a collection of fabric samples from the many local textile factories was started. By 1898 the collection was housed in the National High School of Arts and Textile Industry (ENSAIT), and was seen as a way of cultivating the tastes of the town's workers, foremen and manufacturers. To this end the collection combined elements of literature, fine-arts, science and industrial products. The ENSAIT museum closed with the onset of World War II, and never reopened. From 1899 the collections were displayed in Roubaix's town hall, in preparation for the opening of La Piscine in 2000. L thought I would enjoy this Musée more, since I am not really into Modern Art and since I have a background in Textile...this would be the better choice. They have art hanging on the ceilings and original shower stalls within, beautiful garden and also they have Meert here.

Very nice atmosphere for this special museum. It has been built into the old swimming pool of…read moreRoubaix and kept plenty of accessories from this old time. You can admire sculptures and paintings there gathered by genre. You have a restaurant inside, an auditorium and a fabric room you can rent for your meetings.

A WWI history excursion to Belgium would not be complete without spending time here. The building…read morein which it is housed is a sight unto itself as it features wonderful architecture. The museum allows a somewhat personalized visit as a watch issued upon entry allows registration of basic information such as nationality and preferred language. One can then activate certain displays to get a response specific to that information. There are many items of interest to the history buff and the casual observer alike. It will require two to three hours at minimum to take in all of the information though some will spend more. The displays are excellent. The multimedia presentation is gripping and very well done featuring re-enactments of the accounts of medical personnel. For an extra cost, you can choose to climb the tower to take in the magnificent views afforded by the perspective from the top. Overall, this is a must-see if you are visiting Ypres. The information presented is outstanding, the displays are well done and the museum is well laid out. The €9 fee is unquestionably worth it.

What do you do when you've already visited Brussels & Bruges? We decided to take an In Flanders…read moreFields tour that includes admission to this museum. It was a great tour! It's located in the reconstructed Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle) at Grote Markt in Ypres. Did you know that it had been totally destroyed during WWI? You would never know this by looking at it. The museum itself is very well done. It focuses on the battles of the Ypres Salient. It's the Western Front in WWI that covered about 9.2 square miles and formed a semicircle around Ypres. The objective of the museum is to show more of the human side of the trench warfare battlefield through personal experiences and artifacts. There's a great amount of information about the artillery projectiles that were responsible for two-thirds of all deaths on the battlefield. There's also a display of medical items used to dress these wounds during the battle and at Advanced Dressing Stations such as the one in Essex Farm. The chemical warfare exhibit is the most haunting of them all, but then you'll see art in the midst of all of it. The art pieces are scattered throughout the displays as a segue or transition that humanizes the subject matter. My only regret is not purchasing the audio guide. They give you a microchipped poppy bracelet that allows you to enter. It can be personalized, but no one really gives you any instructions on how to program it. Who has the time for that anyway? It can be used with the interactive displays to scan for personal stories of people who lived through the war. You can keep the bracelet as a souvenir. We just dropped it back into the dedicated container on the way out. There's an option to climb up to the bell tower if you have the time. We also saw a nice café in the museum with a gift shop. We had a very nice visit at the museum and Ypres. It's a beautiful city!