AFRICAMUSEUM

This museum is closely linked to the history of Belgium's colonization of the Congo. Created in 1897 at the instigation of King Leopold II, its aim was to arouse Belgian curiosity about the "Independent State of the Congo", the sovereign's personal property, now the subject of contemporary controversy due to the atrocious tortures perpetrated by the colonists. To coincide with the 1897 Universal Exhibition, he had the "Palais des colonies" built on the royal estate of Tervuren. The temporary exhibition featured "curiosities" from the Congo: stuffed animals, objects of ethnographic interest, export products (coffee, cocoa, tobacco, etc.). The construction of the current neoclassical building was entrusted to the Frenchman Charles Giraut, architect of the Petit Palais. It was inaugurated in 1910 for the second Universal Exhibition. But Leopold II died in 1909. Before his death, he bequeathed the Congo to Belgium.

126 years after its creation, the museum boasts a rich collection of several thousand objects (around 800 on display), which fueled the fantasies of several generations and the script for Tintin in the Congo: the leopard man, the stuffed gazelles... The approach is anthropological, ethnological, botanical, zoological, entomological, geological and mineralogical. The museum, which is also a research center, underwent renovation work from 2013 to 2018, and now exhibits a more contemporary, less colonial vision of Africa, with an original scenography in its new buildings.