Historical account

 
In 1945, the war being over at last, a lot of private collectors hurried to gather a lot of military objects which laid strewn about battlefields. Nevertheless a large part of these objects left by the two armies were used by the population to reconstruct, the people were lacking everything. Those objects were then lost.

Among those collectors, one of them, Guy Franz Arend, managed to preserve a large part of those objects and opened as early as 1950 the « Bastogne Nuts Museum » in an old house of the Grand Rue.

Encouraged and helped by the generals who had fought in Bastogne, notably McAuliffe and von Manteuffel, Mr Arend pursued his undertaking and soon settled in the Maison Siville which was demolished in 1954. It is at that time that the museum moved into a building of the Place McAuliffe, which was named Place du Carré before 1954.

The collections of the museum kept growing richer thanks to donations made by collectors and veterans as well as thanks to the constant research made by Mr Arend.

In 1965, the latter received permission to build a museum next to the Memorial of the Mardasson, on a piece of land owned by the tourist office of Bastogne.

Keen negotiations between the originator, the tourist office and the City of Bastogne delayed the project for 10 years. Finally the tourist office of Bastogne built the star-shaped building, realized according to Mr Arend's ideas and plans and intended to receive his collections.

The new museum, named Bastogne Historical Center, was inaugurated on 31st May 1976 by His Royal Highness, the prince Albert of Liège, who is now the king Albert II of Belgium. On that day, Bastogne celebrated the bicentennial of the United States' independence together with its American friends.

In 2000, the tourist office of Bastogne bought the whole collection of the Bastogne Historical Center to Mr Arend.

In 2004, significant renovation work was realized in the museum and in the shop thanks to a subsidy granted by the Ministry of Tourism. This subsidy notably allowed the museum to redo the tour of the visit, to equip itself with audioguides in four langages which, thanks to detailed comments, allow visitors to understand even better the Battle of the Bulge. 

Each year, the museum welcomes on average 72,000 visitors of every nationalities and every ages. The Bastogne Historical Center is also the founding member of the AMBA (Association of the Museums on the Battle of the Ardennes).

For the future, along with the commune of Bastogne, there is a project aiming to create a reference center on WWII on the very site of the Mardasson. This scheme will require a new estate expansion as well as the conversion of a museum which is now an equipment exhibition into a center of documentation and scientific research on WWII.

See also : The Mardasson. Chronological account and American Memorial.