International Puppet Museum · Ixelles, Brussels
Your show ticket opens a second door
Nearly 4,000 puppets from around the world live behind our stage. Visit before the curtain rises, at the interval or once the show is over. Entry comes with every seat.
One ticket, one afternoon, two worlds
Pick the moment that suits your family. The museum is open to ticket holders around every performance.
01 · BEFORE THE SHOW
Arrive early, start with the oldest
Walk in to puppets made for our founder's first show in 1929, then work your way around the world.
02 · AT THE INTERVAL
Stretch your legs among shadow puppets
Figures from Java, Bali, Turkey and India hang a few steps from your seat. Most children pick a favourite before the bell rings.
03 · AFTER THE SHOW
See the strings up close
Your children just watched a puppet move on strings for an hour. Now they can stand next to one and work out how it was done.
What's inside
A collection that has been growing since 1938
Peruchet opened Belgium's first puppet museum in 1938. Nearly 90 years of travel, gifts and our own workshop later, here is what you'll find.
Three ways to bring a puppet to life
Glove, rod and string. Ask your kids to sort the room into the three kinds. It's harder than it sounds.
Hanuman, the monkey god
One of our Hanuman shadow puppets was named among the 100 masterpieces of Brussels' museum collections by the Brussels Museums Council.
Shadows from Turkey to Java
Turkish Karagöz figures, Chinese shadows, Wayang kulit from Java and Bali, and puppets from India, Thailand, Burma and Vietnam.
Peruchet's own cast since 1929
Puppets from founder Carlo Speder's first show, One Thousand and One Nights, and the 1930s fairytales that followed. Two ways of controlling a string puppet were invented in this house.
All plays this Season
On stage now, museum included
Pinocchio
A wooden boy on strings, telling the story of a wooden boy who wants to be real. Collodi’s tale, staged the only way it should be.
Reserve Tickets for PinocchioLe Petit Chaperon Rouge
Perrault’s tale, told with marionettes that make the forest genuinely dark and the grandmother genuinely funny. Children lean forward. Parents remember why the story lasted 300 years.
Reserve Tickets for Le Petit Chaperon Rouge