Sadly on this visit the museum is closed for renovation but will reopen in June 2012. Just have to…read morecome again 19/7/2010 A truly fantastic museum, on entry you are given the identity of a soldier from the war & follow his trail in the war. Sadly many do not see the end. Ypres is a beautiful town with the Market place & cloth hall at it's heart. I would certainly recommend a trip to here.

The 'In Flanders Fields' museum was the highlight of my trip to Belgium. The whole town of Ypres is…read morewonderful, but the Mennin Gate and the In Flanders Fields museum are particularly thought-provoking and powerful. The museum itself is one of the best museums I've ever visited. I'm not even that interested in wars and all things like that, but I found it to be well-laid out and powerful. The museum is sitauted inside the old cloth building, which has been rebuilt to show the amount of damage - so there are bullet holes throughout. Inside, the museum isn't very big but it's well organised. Visitors are given a card containing the name of someone who was in WWI and throughout the museum there are boxes in which people can check up on how their characters are doing. The museum is designed to invoke a reaction. Throughout, it uses a powerful mixture of noise, films, images and words to convey the emotions of the time there are letters from soldiers saying sad things like I blew off a soldiers head today, got a bit of blood on my shirt which was a pain. It's saddening. Periodically, there are gunshots and bomb blasts overhead, for added effect. At the end of the trail in the museum there's a giftshop. They seem to have a Poppy theme throughout it, and lots of items displaying the poppies and the famous 'In Flanders Fields' poem.

Talbot house was the finest house in Poperinge at the outbreak of WW1 being the residence of the…read moretown's wealthiest hop merchant. When the war broke out the house was rented by an English army chaplain Philip "Tubby" Clayton as a refuge for soldiers granted leave from fighting at the nearby frontline. The house was purchased by a trust and has been preserved as tribute the story of Tubby Clayton and the men that he provided a haven to during the war. The house has a museum and is also open to guests. When we arrived we were greeted by two friendly dutch ladies who turned out to be volunteers who acted as wardens to the house during our stay. Every guest is presented with a nice warm cup of tea and a chat about the history of the house and the surrounding attractions relating to WW1. On our trip we visited the Passchendale museum with realistic trenches and dugouts, Tyne Cot cemetery, the Irish peace garde and finished with the playing of the last post which takes place very night at 8pm at the Menin Gate in Ypres. Talbot house provides comfortable accommodation at very reasonable prices, there is also a beautiful kitchen where guests can store and prepare there own food. Breakfast can be ordered in our sourced form the nearby bakeries in the town There is free parking in the Gasthuis lot to the rear or elsewhere in the town. Apart form the WW1 sights, Poperinge is at the centre of the Belgian hop growing region which is home to some of the best Belgian beers including West Vleteren, St Bernardus and the ubiquitous Poperinge Hommer Beer. This is an exceptional and unique place and should not be missed by anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the atmosphere and experience of WW1.

Doubles as a bed and breakfast with a separate Yelp listing - did not stay here. The museum is very…read morewell put together with a surprising number of rooms and plenty of history to take in surrounding World War 1. At the end of the museum self-guided tour, you are able to go into the bed and breakfast portion (within the actual historic house) and sit and have tea with one of the staff. We also were given a tour of some of the rooms in the historical bed and breakfast, which were very impressive. The experience was well put together, unique, and the staff were outstanding. I found the experience to be personal, homely, and educational. Really glad we stopped in.

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!

This is a great museum in the heart of Ypres. There is a parking lot nearby and some street parking…read moreavailable. Entrance was 10 euros for adults. Kids under 6 are free. You get a poppy bracelet to let you in and out of exhibit and to follow along with one person's experience. Audio guides are available for a small fee. It's a great museum with lots of great artifacts, and amazing dramatized first hand accounts. The museum offers everything in English, French, Dutch, and German so it's easy for many people to read and understand. We spent about 2 hours there. I'm a history nerd and read a majority of the panels. Our little one did well. The museum is stroller accessible and when he was done my husband was able t take him to the cafe downstairs for a snack while I continued in the museum. Highly recommend.

The museum building was being renovated on the outside so looked a bit shabby but once inside the…read moremaze of small rooms on the 2nd floor held information about the other allies, in the main the Belgians and their part in the war. The other interesting part to this is that they have recreated underground bunkers in the cellars which was interesting. The museum is set in a park with a lake, which would have been nice if it hadn't have been raining during our visit. Car parking is free & entrance is 5 Euro per person. Toilets are available but are a bit public, by that I mean, men & women can hear each other going!

By far the best museum for WWI. We visited The Flanders Field Museum as well as other trenches and…read morethis museum was WAY better. We had our 4 young children (ages 4-10) with us and everyone enjoyed the museum. It is so comprehensive, interactive and fabulous. I feel if you're only seeing one museum that this is the one to see. Unfortunately we went to the Flanders Field Museum after and were so disappointed after this museum. Must see!

The story behind this place is that during some time after the war some children were playing in…read morethe forest and one of them fell down a hole. When their parents came to rescue them they discovered a huge network of preserved trenches. In fact this is apparently one of the very few preserved trenches from the war namely beause after the war ended, with the exception of a couple of patches of land, and a huge number of cemeteries, any trace of the war was pretty much destroyed. However, this is on private land but it has been opened to the public for you to crawl through the old trenches and bunkers, and it is definitely worth checking out. I came here on one of the tours, and you do need to purchase tickets to enter.

If you're a beer enthusiast, this is a must visit. They do some cool exhibits on the history of hop…read morefarming, and after driving the area and seeing modern hop vines, it was cool to know how they got that way. There are also a handful of displays on breweries that are local to the Ieper and Poperinge area. On the ground level is a 42 cabinet display of almost every beer made in Belgium, from every region except Brussels. (I told them Brussels was missing and she said she'd note it to the guys.)

Everybody knows that Belgium is famous for beer, but there would be no beer in Belgium if it wasn't…read morefor hops. Hops are plants used in beer making that are a stabilizing agent and also to give it flavor. The Hop Museum celebrates this plant by showing the history of it, which was once harvested in abundance in the area. You are given an audio guide that will talk to you through the displays over the museum's four floors. Other than a couple short movies and quizzes, you will learn how the hops were grown and harvested, about the peasants and foreigners who used to come to Poperinge to help out with the harvest, and of course the celebrations (with lots of beer!) that were held after the harvest was completed. Hops are still grown in the area but not in the numbers as before, with most of Belgium's hops now coming from Germany and the Czech Republic. This museum is very interesting and will give you a better apprecation for the nation's favorite drink. And just added to the museum is the Belgian Beer Wall so you can see the hundreds of different national brews. Sante!