A visit to the National Tobacco Museum of Belgium

The National Tobacco Museum (Nationaal Tabaksmuseum) in Belgium is a cultural institution located in Wervik (Wervicq in French), close to the French border. Set “beside an old windmill on the banks of the Lys” in the Brieken district, this unusual museum is devoted to the history of tobacco and of smokers’ habits. The Wervik area has been “tobacco-growing country since 1640”, and more than 95% of Belgian tobacco production is concentrated there. It is therefore a logical home for the museum, which offers the public some 12,000 tobacco-related objects (tins, posters, pipes, advertisements, farming tools and so on) telling the story of tobacco from cultivation to smuggling.

The history and origins of the museum

The tobacco museum opened in 1987 in the outbuildings of the Brieken mill (18th century), a listed historic building. This former milling house was carefully restored and completed by a modern wing in 2003, giving it “an entirely new appearance” combining authenticity with pared-down modernism. In 2014, the museum route underwent a “complete transformation” to mark the centenary of the First World War, enriching the permanent exhibition and its displays. The museum was conceived by enthusiasts of the region’s tobacco heritage, with the aim of putting the industrial past of the area into dialogue with contemporary questions about tobacco.

Collections and themes

The permanent collection

The museum’s permanent collection displays more than 2,000 selected objects across 600 m² of exhibition space. It sets out, in accessible fashion, “how tobacco conquered the world after the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492” and highlights the local growing tradition of Wervik, which in the 20th century became “the centre of tobacco growing in Belgium”. Visitors see a range of artefacts: a reconstruction of a 17th-century inn, a 1930s tobacconist’s shop, a 19th-century smoking room, and a pipe gallery displaying pieces in clay, meerschaum, porcelain and wood.

The permanent exhibition also illustrates every form of tobacco consumption (smoking, snuff, chewing) through objects and images, and explores the unexpected links between tobacco and other fields (smuggling, advertising, music, religion, sport, eroticism and more). Old advertising panels, now viewed with nostalgia, and accounts of cross-border smuggling punctuate the route. According to those who designed the museum, the aim is to offer “a fascinating and educational experience” that helps visitors understand the historical, social and economic importance of the tobacco industry in Belgium

The site and its architecture

The Tabaksmuseum stands in the small town of Wervik (West Flanders), a border crossroads where the Flemish and French regions meet. The museum occupies the former buildings adjoining the Brieken mill, a listed monument built in the 18th century. This restored windmill provides a picturesque setting on the banks of the Lys, extended by contemporary museum facilities. The extension opened in 2003 is marked by a spare architecture that contrasts with the brick walls and traditional roof of the old mill, standing for the meeting of old and new.

The site thus retains a strong historical character linked to the local tobacco industry. Near the museum there are walking routes (the “tobacco trail”) that cross the former tobacco fields. The whole Wervik area promotes this agricultural and industrial heritage, with the museum as the anchor point of that history.

The museum as cultural heritage

The National Tobacco Museum has become a cultural and tourist anchor for Wervik. It follows an ambitious heritage approach: the institution sets out to be “a centre of knowledge on the history of the tobacco industry, mainly in Belgium”, while safeguarding the region’s tobacco heritage (objects, buildings and traditions). Its stated mission is to convey to visitors the historical and economic importance of Belgian tobacco, to underline the particular role of Wervik in that history, and to encourage critical reflection on how attitudes to smoking have changed.

That position carries all the more weight because Wervik was long regarded as Belgium’s “cigarette capital”. Indeed, “more than 95% of the Belgian tobacco harvest comes from” this border area. Although most of the traditional factories have now disappeared, the region keeps that memory alive through the museum, which helps to give value to an industrial heritage at risk of vanishing by placing it in a wider cultural context where history, popular art and public health questions meet.

Permanent and temporary exhibitions

The permanent section of the museum covers several centuries of tobacco history in chronological order. It displays smokers’ and collectors’ objects while reconstructing historical settings (a smoking bar, a tobacco shop, an antique dealer’s cabinet and so on). Explanatory texts and multimedia place these pieces in the wider history of the industrialisation of tobacco, from prohibition and smuggling to the advertising campaigns of the 20th century.

The museum also puts on temporary exhibitions exploring a particular theme. In September 2023, for example, an exhibition entitled “100 years of Belga” retraced the story of this emblematic Belgian cigarette, from its family origins to the iconic advertising campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s. More recently, in the spring of 2025, the museum offered an interactive escape room entitled “R.I.P. Philippe”, an educational investigation game in which visitors, working in teams, had to uncover the secret of a legendary figure in local tobacco. Other temporary projects, talks and workshops are programmed regularly, making the Tabaksmuseum a lively place to visit for a range of audiences.