On Rue Emile Delva in Laeken, you will find Belgium’s most inconspicuous museum.
In fact, the museum is so discreet, it only really appears at sunset – and you might walk through it without even realising.
The Musée du Réverbère, or Lamppost Museum, consists of a row of 15 old lampposts which light up when the sun goes down.
It is an installation by artists Nathalie Mertens and Christophe Terlinden, created in 2004 at the request of an organisation that manages some of the social housing in the street.
Karen Francois and Kamiel De Bruyne, co-authors of Bizarre Belgium: 50 Places for a Weird Day Out, included the museum in their list of the 50 most bizarre places in Belgium.
In the guide, the couple explained the difficulties they had finding the museum: “If you start following the ‘Straatlantaarnmuseum’ or ‘Musée du Réverbère’ signs near Emile Delvastraat in the Brussels district of Laeken, you’ll notice that they suddenly stop.
“You might lean your bike against a pole and look up the exact location of the museum on your phone. And then you’ll realise: the pole your bike is leaning against is the Street Lamp Museum. That’s how we stumbled upon this shady Brussels museum.”
One of the old street lamps on Rue Emile Delva in Laeken. Credit: Ingrid Morales.
According to Francois and De Bruyne, Brussels once played a pioneering role in the history of street lighting, and was the first European city to light its streets with gas in 1825.
To create the museum, the artists worked with the local community to find old lamps, which they restored and placed in chronological order on the street, with the oldest dating from around 1890.
“Our favourite is number four: a large, elegant lamp with one of the first electric street lights in the city,” said Francois and De Bruyne.
Bizarre Belgium: 50 Places for a Weird Day Out is available to buy in Waterstones Brussels and other good bookshops.
