Musée Drai Eechelen

Musée Dräi Eechelen

Entrance to Musée Dräi Eechelen

This museum is in the renovated Fort Thüngen. This remarkable building was first built in 1732-33 and is largely unchanged. The museum display takes you on a tour of the history of Luxembourg as a city-fort inside actual casemates. For a longer day out, you should note that this is also on the same site as the Mudam Musuem of Modern Art which is located behind the Musée Dräi Eechelen.

As a military museum the Dräi Eechelen place has it's fair share of pistols, swords and even, gulp, a guillotine! However, it was also a good place to discuss the value of history more broadly and how and what historians preserve tells us about what was important to them and to question whether these things are still important to us today.

In no particular order and slightly randomly, here are some things I learnt:

1. Entry is free and the museum is open Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm and open on Wednesday until 8pm. On entry, visitors will be asked to place bags and coats in the lockers downstairs. As you descend the stone spiral staircase you find yourself in a casemate-style tunnel. You will feel like you just walked downstairs to the past. Once all bags have been deposited (don't forget a euro for the locker!) you can re-ascend the staircase and begin your journey into the history of Luxembourg as a Fort.

   

   Casemate tunnel near the lockers

2. Forts need a lot of keys. Something I hadn't really thought about! Oddly, the children seemed fascinated and we enjoyed trying to work out which was our favourite key.

   

   Many keys

3. Artists have always been inspired by views of Luxembourg. There are some beautiful prints and paintings of Luxembourg. The dismantling of the Fort from 1867 also coincided with the development of photography. Technical photography of bridges sounds boring but considering it as part of a wider story on how historians preserve and show changes to a region meant that we spent a surprising amount of time looking at old pictures of Luxembourg.

   

   View of Pfaffenthal

4. Maths and history do go together! In the display cases you can view practical geometry manuals that explain what Fort-builders need to consider. You can also see Vauban's treaty on Geometry for Fortifications.

   
   

   

   Vauban's treaty on Geometry and Fortifications

   

   Practical geometry history book

   History and fashion also go together! There is also a small display case on military fashion and an assortment of uniforms from military groups that occupied Luxembourg.

Military uniforms on display

5. Mainly though, this is a fantastic museum for primary sources. Take your budding historians and discuss maps, (some rather fun), treaties, posters and military records. We discussed what the people creating these things might have been trying to do and how they fitted in to our understanding of the timeline of Luxembourg's history.

   

   

   
   
   

For a very detailed explanation of each room you can visit Permanent exhibition - Exhibitions - Musée Dräi Eechelen - Luxembourg