The renewed Airborne Museum is a unique experience. The beautifully renovated and modernized building houses the world’s largest collection of Operation Market Garden memorabilia. The war is brought very close to home in the Netherlands’ only battlefield museum.

The monumental nineteenth-century villa – the headquarters of the British Airborne Division in September 1944 – holds 1,700 square metres of history and experience. The underground Airborne Experience (900 m2), will transport you into the very midst of the battle. If there is one thing the Airborne Museum wants to demonstrate, it is that freedom should never be taken for granted and that freedom is experienced together. It shows that reconciliation is possible.

There is also much to see in the museum’s immediate surroundings, such as the Airborne War Cemetery and the memorial column on which freedom is represented by a man surrounded by civilians and soldiers. There is also a bronze statue sculpted by Jits Bakker, who was only a boy at the time of the battle. This statue (‘The Guardian’), which is set in the park near the Airborne Museum, is of an angel that accompanies Man to heaven, giving hope and offering protection with its wings.