Did you ever wonder what your grandparents’ life was like in their Dutch childhood but grandma intimidates you and your phone doesn’t have a Ouija board anyway? If that’s the case, then the “Open Air Museum” in Arnhem (Netherlands) is for you!
The museum presents the life of commoners like us in the last hundred years, but with a twist: rather than recreating what a home would look like, they simply relocated several houses from different time periods to a single place and called it a day. 17th-century farm? There is one (several, actually). Fisherman’s house? Windmill? Rich house? Poor house? Very poor house? There’s at least one of each. If you want to see history come to life, this open-air museum has you covered.
The museum is organised in several areas, each organised around a common theme. Some of them are …
- … the small farms, with plenty of live animals for city people like us to learn what a pig looks like.
- … the city centre, where it took us embarrassingly long to figure out whether a Chinese restaurant was real or not (it wasn’t).
- … the public buildings, including a hospital that looks and smells like the real thing and a motorcycle nun wearing a leather jacket.
- … the “normal” neighbourhood, with houses that look not too far from our own childhoods (except for the fake dead baby on display)
- … the industrial areas, one with very big barns and cheese factories and another one with trains, weaving, industrial clothes washing and a blacksmith.
The entrance price to the museum is a bit expensive, but at least we learned a lot: how steam-powered factories worked, how to make oil when all you have is a donkey and industrial-size machinery, that people used to sleep in closets, and that you are no longer allowed to make a pile of dirt, put a broken door, and call it a house. And the bakery is very good!
