Museums of the Far East (Brussels, 14-7-2007)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

If you are in Brussels visiting the Atomium, like many tourists do, you are quite likely to see a Japanese tower sticking out from the trees quite near to it. This is one of the buildings of the "Museums of the Far East" and it's definitely worth a visit (or two!).

This museum is part of the museums for art and history (KMKG-MRAH) in Brussels. The other museums are great already but this one is really really special!
There is the Japanese tower which holds many Asian treasures and looks amazing on the inside. Sadly you cannot climb the whole tower but the outside is beautiful enough. There's a nice Bhuddistic garden around the tower too.

And then there is the Chinese pavilion which has so many sculptures and carvings on the outside you'll probably walk around it a few times before entering. The inside holds Chinese treasures and a very Baroque-Exotic-Art Nouveau inside. Even the bathrooms are worth a look!

And then there's another building holding a museum for Japanese art. The ceiling of this building is very nice, especially if you think this building was supposed to be a stable for carriages!
All the objects inside are perfect. There's not room for many but they are all beautiful. And anyway: there's so much to see outside and inside the buildings itself already!

And now you wonder what are these Asian structures doing here in Brussels anyway?? Well, king Leopold II saw buildings like these at a World Fair in Paris and liked them so much he wanted some himself . So he had them built (around 1900-10) on part of his domain in Brussels. Parts of the building even came from Japan and China to make them look as original as possible!
Now the buildings are owned by the Belgian state and since a few years we can visit them again.

If you want to know more about the history of the buildings you should definitely visit them because there's a lot more interesting information to find in the museum itself ;-)

Museum-site (Dutch and French only) here
Another free visit with werchter-amuseevous!
http://www.amuseevous.be/site/content/avmusea_detail.asp?mID=23&sub=deeln
Pictures: Asian Arts