This past fall, my husband and I had the privilege of traveling to Europe for the first time. Countries visited included Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (London), and France.
If you want to get a little peek into this adventure, listen in on episode #47 of The Piano Pantry Podcast!
The entire trip went quite smoothly. The only transportation hiccup we encountered was traveling via train from the Netherlands to London. One of our trains out of the Netherlands was delayed, causing a missed connection from Brussels to London. Luckily, they could get us on a train later that evening, but it meant we had an eight-hour overlay in Brussels, Belgium.
What at first seemed to be an inconvenience turned into a wonderful opportunity as we could spend an entire day exploring the city! A delay of two or three hours would have kept us waiting at the train station.
As we walked through the city, we passed a beautiful building, its splendor making me pause in awe to take it in.
A closer look revealed it was a musical instrument museum!
(As a side note, my husband and I noticed schoolchildren on field trips in multiple places, each wearing yellow vests. Brilliant!)
Aren’t the details on this building gorgeous?
Since this blog is about piano teaching, I selected around 25 favorites from the keyboard segment of the museum to share in this post – just a fraction of what the museum held! (Plus a couple of fun other instruments.)
They’re listed in date order through the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s. A few of the instruments in this post are featured here on the museum’s website. Those that are, I also directly linked below each image.
Enjoy this phenomenal collection!
1500
Fretted Clavichord – Italy, c1587
Janelle Bracken is a collaborative pianist and owner of 
than in-person. Hopefully, the more we do it, the easier it will get!
to enjoy after each hand-washing.