Telephone: +33 (0)3-21591776
Website: not available
Shop: shop present
Restaurant/refreshments: not available
Size of the museum/site: small
Year of visit: 2003
Overall rating:
Description: The hard to find Musée militaire de la Targette in Neuville-Saint-Vaast (a tiny village along the D937 road running from Béthune to Arras) is worth searching for if you happen to be in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The museum offers an extensive collection of 'small objects' dealing with World War 1, like weapons, helmets, propaganda material, military documents and a very interesting set of gasmasks (see picture below). Apart from that there are a few dioramas showing different aspects of the bloody front-line fighting.
The museum is stacked from wall to wall with interesting stuff and could really do with a larger accommodation, which would allow for some bigger dioramas (the ones available now are rather on the small side).
As the museum certainly won't keep you busy all day long (about half an hour would be a realistic guess of the average time needed to walk along all the exhibits), you might want to combine the Musée militaire de la Targette with a visit to the Musée vivant 1914-1918, situated a few kilometres up north along the D937.
