Museum Speelklok

Museum Speelklok holds mechanical musical instruments - machines built to play themselves, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth - in a former church in the middle of Utrecht, and the reason it works is that they are demonstrated: every visit includes guided rounds where the instruments are started, so the museum is loud rather than silent. The range runs from musical clocks and snuff boxes with tiny combs, through singing bird automata and orchestrions, to street organs and enormous Belgian and Dutch dance-hall organs with drums, accordions and hundreds of pipes, which fill the building when they run. The Netherlands has a specific street organ tradition and several of the great instruments are here. There is a restoration workshop on site, and the museum works on instruments from collections elsewhere.

History

The museum grew out of an exhibition of mechanical organs and other musical automata in Utrecht in the summer of 1956, whose success led to a permanent national museum; since 1984 it has been housed in the medieval Buurkerk in the centre of the city (Wikipedia, Museum Speelklok).

Highlights

• Instruments played, not shown - guided rounds where the machines are started.
• From snuff boxes to dance organs - the full range of self-playing mechanisms.
• Dutch street organs - the national tradition, with several of the major instruments.
• A working restoration shop - the museum repairing instruments from other collections.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Practical notes

The demonstrations are the visit and they run to a schedule - arrive for one. It is genuinely loud. Closed some Mondays. Busy with families at weekends and in holidays.

Nearby

The Dom tower and Oudegracht wharves are a few minutes away.

Key facts