Decoration and ambiance
The pre-war spirit and way of being is recreated with the Imperial Fête, the golden years and the Roaring Twenties. The choice of materials, the gay and catchy music of the era and warm, bright lighting creates a feeling of peace before the shock of the war.
At the end of the spectrum, the lives lost in battle are commemorated in dedicated, partly closed-off spaces. The floor and the walls are sober in colour and the lighting is cool. These spaces are deliberately more intimate and aim to create an atmosphere of mourning and remembrance.
The battle experience itself is evoked in areas that are punctuated with the decor and recreations of various key moments: 1870, 1914 and then 1918, 1940 and then 1943, in order to portray the evolution of the arms in use and combat methods.
The daily life of soldiers is portrayed via the objects on displays, most notably their gear and equipment, in the environment that characterised each conflict, such as the trenches in the First World War and the Phony War of 1940.
The daily life of civilians illustrates the situation in the Ardennes, which was occupied three times, with collections depicting recreations of street scenes. The evolution of the conflicts forces us to reposition the Ardennes from the First World War onwards within the new context of total war and to integrate the industrial dimension of the war, the violence suffered by civilians...
Audiovisual displays
About thirty audiovisual displays are distributed along the length of the visit trail.
The so-called “contextualisation” audiovisuals help visitors to become immersed in the subject. They consist of atmospheric sounds and the projection of archived material to help put the collections and themes into context.
The documentaries serve an informative purpose as they are made up of animated maps linked the Gallery of Time, montages of archive images, historical overviews…
Three more significant projections will be on offer, each of which will focus on one conflict only, but within the context of key dates in the history of Ardennes: the battle of Sedan in 1870, the last combat in Vrigne-Meuse in 1918 and the battles of the Aisne in June 1940.
Interpretive displays
The museography is completed with interpretive displays including mechanical manipulations, the presentation of objects, graphical displays linked to the presentation of arms, dioramas…
These displays help in mediation and help visitors better understand and contextualise the information. They also aim to be thought provoking and to encourage visitors to ask questions.