It’s always good to have some museums in Belgium up your sleeve as places to take children during a vacation or a wet weekend. Here’s a short list of 15 child-friendly museums in Belgium.
Toy museum, Mechelen
- Celebrate Barbie’s 60th birthday!
- Until 19 April 2020: Take a stroll along the catwalk and enjoy 60 years of fashion history featuring iconic Barbies
- Huge fixed collection of toys of all sorts from all over the world
Gallo-Roman Museum, Tongeren
- Discover our ancestors in Belgium’s oldest city
- For children from ages 7 to 13, an audio guide with Archaeologist Bob the Digger gives lively explanations of the objects on display
- Children can discover how prehistoric humans made fire and boiled water, and meet figures such as Ambiorix and Caesar
Tutankhamun @Liege-Guillemins station, Liège
- Until 31 May 2020, a great opportunity to learn all about the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun
- The burial chambers have been completely reconstructed
- Beware of the Pharaoh’s curse!
Royal Military Museum, Brussels
- Real aircraft in a giant hangar
- Take a seat in the cockpit of an F-16
- Enjoy a super view from the top of the Arcade du Cinquantenaire, overlooking Brussels
Magritte Museum, Brussels
- Introduce your children to the world of surrealistic art with the world’s largest René Magritte collection
- 230 paintings, drawings, sculptures, objects, advertising posters, musical scores, photographs and films
- Special audio guides for children (6-11) and teenagers
Goalmine, Genk
- This will keep a soccer-mad boy or girl happy for hours
- Interactive games, movies, mementos, video clips …
- Lots of info about Racing Genk F.C. and its history with the local mining industry
Comics Station Antwerp, Antwerp
- Favorite Belgian comic book characters in interactive attractions
- Suske & Wiske, Lucky Luke, Urbanus, Jommeke, the Smurfs …
- Museum combined with a park (indoor slides etc.)
Castle of the Counts, Ghent
- Medieval castle with special weapons museum and torture chamber
- Free for everyone under 18
- Audio tour and visio guides
Museum of Natural Sciences, Brussels
- Real dinosaurs! Play at being an archaeologist in the Paleolab (5+)
- Free discovery trails for children, 6-8 or 9-12 years old
- Exhibition on Antarctica until 30th August 2020
Aquarium Museum, Liège
- The riches and beauty of the animal kingdom
- 250 species of ocean, sea, lake and river fish from around the world populate the 46 pools
- Reconstruction of the jaw of a Megalodon (an extinct giant shark): take a selfie standing between its teeth
Mini-Europe, Brussels
- Visit the whole of Europe in a couple of hours
- Everything on a child’s scale (1:125 to be precise)
- Interactive walk at the foot of the atomium
Technopolis, Mechelen
- Children’s do-it-yourself center; experiment and learn by playing
- Discovery tour from 4 years of age
- Great place to have a child’s birthday party!
The House of Alijn, Ghent
- A trip down memory lane with your children or grandchildren
- Discover how daily life has changed from the past
- Dip into the dressing-up box, flick through photo albums from Grandma’s time, revel in the nostalgia of old films, enjoy Play-Doh, hopscotch and marbles
Computer Museum NAM-IP, Namur
- Follow the development of computing power
- Journey from the early calculating machines to your smartphone
- Marvel at the size of the early computers!
Red Star Line museum, Antwerp
- An eventful journey tracing the history of migration by following the footsteps of specific emigrants
- Discover the role played by the Red Star Line of ships transporting people from Antwerp to America
- Until 19 April: free exhibition about today’s refugees in ‘De Loods’, the old baggage shed of the Red Star Line shipping company.
More to come …
Researching this blog post has made me aware just how many excellent child-friendly museums there are in Belgium. So I will be making a second list of another 15 great museums shortly. If you have a special recommendation of a museum that you have visited and would like to see added to the list, just drop me a comment below or contact me.
Well I don’t have any young kids but I’d go to them anyway! 😊
That’s because you’re an official Good Sport!
All of these museums look like so much fun no matter the age of the visitor. My grands would adore the Natural History, the Aquarium, and the Royal Military Museum.
Museums these days are so much more fun than they used to be in the 60s! Then, they could generally be described as stuffy and boring. Your grands would surely have a ball in some of these, Sharon 😺😺
So many great museums and I learned that Barbie was 60 this year 😀
Yes she’s looking good isn’t she?
I wish I looked that bad. 🙂
We would enjoy all of these too and I suspect I’d be waiting for Mr ET in several of them. He’d be taking his time and reading every word.
The Red Star Line, is a really interesting one! Nice List! Happy New Year 🙂
Same to you! Health, happiness and some great nomadographs! 📸