The House of European History was initially proposed in 2008 by then President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering. The justification for the project was clear: the generation of people who experienced the tragedies of the 20th century and went on to build the European Union was disappearing. The achievements of European Integration were increasingly being called into question, and the history of European integration was not yet explained in any museum.

Thus, the museum was to be a place for the ‘European idea’ to grow, and to enhance understanding of European history in all its complexity, to encourage the exchange of ideas and to question assumptions. The exhibitions would show the common values of European unification: human dignity, freedom, democracy, the rule of law. In other words, it would demonstrate what Europeans can achieve when working together, overcoming social, economic and political upheavals on a path towards peaceful coexistence.

To realise this, a multidisciplinary team of curators, educators and museologists was assembled in 2011, along with two consulting bodies, an Academic Committee and Board of Trustees, with funding provided by the European Parliament and European Commission. The team’s concept was to show the events of Europe through a Pan-European lens, taking a ‘helicopter view’ of the continent, rather than a sum of national histories. The content was selected based only on processes which were originally European, spread to several European countries, and are still relevant today. Significantly, the team was to take an impartial, academically independent view of European history, using a range of sources, voices and narratives, and ensure the museum could be experienced in 24 European languages – no small feat! The selected venue was a former children’s dental clinic in Brussels, Belgium, the building first financed by inventor of the Kodak camera and philanthropist George Eastman.

The Permanent exhibition started with the origins and formation of the continent, moving to the 19th century political and economic transformations, the havoc of the World Wars, then the rebuilding and integration process of the last half century. The idea of ‘memory’ runs through the exhibition: which historical experiences bind the various nations in European history? Should people remember tragic events to avoid a repetition, or are they bound to forget in order to be able to live on? The idea was that shared historical events have often led to different experiences and different ways of remembering the same historical process.

The Permanent exhibition was brought to life with over 1500 objects, documents and audio-visual materials, from over 300 museums and collections from across Europe and the world. Each of these objects is a piece of European history, a splinter or a symbol of our collective memory, of the compromise of many Europeans before us. These artefacts and their backstories allow us to reflect on who we are today. The museum opened on ‘Europe Day’ – 9 May 2017.