Museums near The James Ensor House

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Nearest museums · 6

History · since 1996

The Ostend City Museum

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The house on the Langestraat was built between 1770 and 1780, and from 1834 the royal couple rented it: Louise-Marie, whose lungs were weak, had been ordered sea air by her doctors. Here she died on 11 October 1850, at ten past eight in the morning — the first queen of the Belgians. The room where it happened is furnished as it was then. Leopold II bought the house in 1867 and kept it as a memory of his mother. Beyond that comes the city’s memory — of the fishery and the port, of shipping and of the resort that ate the fishing town. The museum explains Ostend.

The room where Queen Louise-Marie died on 11 October 1850: furnished as it was then, and the bed in it is in all likelihood her deathbed. The house at Langestraat 69, built between 1770 and 1780 and rented by the royal couple from 1834. The halls of the fishery, the port and shipping; posters, papers and photographs of the resort. The temporary exhibitions are made by the De Plate local-history society, which works in the same house.

150 m from here · Langestraat 69 · ·

· No. 87

Transport · since 1932

The sailing ship Mercator

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A three-masted barquentine of 1932, built at Leith to the design of the polar explorer Adrien de Gerlache as the training ship of the Belgian merchant fleet — a protected monument and probably the best-known ship in the country. Twenty-eight years of service brought fifty-four voyages and only two masters; since 1960 she has lain in the Ostend marina. The ship has no collection. What the Mercator is remembered for is no longer aboard: of the two moai brought from Easter Island, the Belgian one — Pou Hakanononga, six tonnes of andesite — stands in the Cinquantenaire in Brussels, the second went to the French, and the remains of Father Damien have long been at Leuven.

The ship herself, of 1932: fifteen sails of 1,600 square metres in all, the deck, the cadets’ quarters, the officers’ cabins, the chart room. The ship’s operating room, which served as a mortuary chapel when the Mercator carried the remains of Father Damien from New Zealand to Antwerp in 1936. The memory of the seventh voyage of 1934–1935, from which she brought back the Franco-Belgian Easter Island expedition and two moai.

750 m from here · Jachthaven, Jan Piersplein · ·

· No. 86

Art · since 2008

Mu.ZEE

outstanding

The only collection arranged as one continuous account of art in Belgium: eight thousand works by 1,341 artists, from François Bossuet of 1821 to Luc Tuymans; the museum puts it as “from 1880 to tomorrow”. There is more Spilliaert here than anywhere in the world — a hundred and ten works of its own plus a private collection on long loan since 2020, and that is what people come for.

The museum’s own building on Romestraat has been closed for rebuilding since January 2025 and reopens in 2028; the collection is shown in parts in the Venetian Galleries, so the whole of it cannot be seen at present. The Léon Spilliaert holding — the Ostend seafront and dyke, the night self-portraits; nothing matches it anywhere, and at its core stands Self-portrait with Red Pencil of 1908, Indian ink, gouache and pastel on paper, 85 × 69 cm, inv. SM000005. James Ensor and the circle of Les XX (Willy Finch). Constant Permeke, Jean Brusselmans, Frits Van den Berghe — Flemish expressionism. Paul Delvaux, Georges Vantongerloo, Roger Raveel, Luc Tuymans. The oldest work is François Bossuet’s The Sawmills at Slijkens near Ostend, 1821.

850 m from here · Venetian Galleries (Venetiaanse Gaanderijen), Parijsstraat 2, at the corner of the sea dyke · ·

· No. 81

Military history · since 1811

Fort Napoleon

for enthusiasts

A five-sided tower fort of 1811, of the tours et redoutes modèle 1811 type: five walls of 27.4 metres, brickwork 2.65 metres thick, more than eight million bricks, the foundation pit dug by Spanish prisoners of war and conscripted local builders. The fort saw neither siege nor action: Napoleon’s star set before it was needed, and so it came through whole. It did not stand empty, though. In the First World War the Germans made it the artillery’s assembly quarters, put the Hindenburg battery behind it and brought in electricity, heating and water; in the Second the fort was taken into the Atlantic Wall. From that first occupation the murals of 1915 remain on its walls, and they are the one thing here that can be called a collection. What is shown now is a story route and temporary exhibitions.

The mural Der Barbar of 1915 by the soldier-artist Heinrich-Otto Pieper (1881–1968), over the chimneypiece: a German knight in armour with his broadsword at a Scot’s throat, and beside him the severed heads of an Italian, a Frenchman, a Japanese, a Senegalese and a Russian — German war propaganda without a fig leaf; next to it an allegorical version of the Bremen Town Musicians. Restored in 1932. The building itself: a pentagon with its north corner to the sea, two tiers of casemates, a dormitory for five hundred soldiers with 96 loopholes, a dry moat ten metres wide and five caponiers.

1.5 km from here · Vuurtorenweg 13 · ·

· No. 85

Science and nature · since 2000

Astropolis, Space Science Center

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A planetarium and space science centre on the Duinkerkseweg: there is no collection, and what is shown is knowledge. Here they talk about natural science.

The planetarium dome and the sky shows. The space-flight section. There are no objects of a museum kind.

3.7 km from here · Duinkerkseweg 16 · ·

· No. 91

Military history · since 1992

The Atlantic Wall at Raversyde

for enthusiasts

A strip of dune where the works of both world wars have survived side by side. The chief thing here is the Aachen battery of 1915: the only German coastal battery of the First World War of which enough is left to read the whole arrangement of that war’s coastal defence; of the others only scattered concrete boxes remain.

The Aachen battery — begun on 8 January 1915 and in service by the end of that April: the observation post, the gun positions, the communication trenches. The Saltzwedel-neu battery of the Second World War — more than sixty bunkers and underground galleries. Everything has been kept where it stands: nothing was carted in.

6.0 km from here · Nieuwpoortsesteenweg 636 · ·

· No. 83

5 museums have no point set. They are not in this count.