Military History | Musée Somme 1916, Albert — The Shelter Dug for the Next War

Ten metres under the town, a passage runs two hundred and fifty metres from the flank of the basilica at Albert to the public garden. What is in it now is the Somme of 1 July 1916 — the trenches, the kit, the sound and light of some fifteen alcoves opening off the corridor. The corridor belongs to the war after that one.

The museum's own account of its site says that, as the Second World War came on, the town council ordered seven shelters dug so that Albert's civilians would have somewhere to go and would not take to the roads. This is the largest of them. Somme Tourisme records the same use in one phrase — abri anti-aérien, air-raid shelter. The museum adds that people here had been cutting hiding places into the chalk under their houses since the ninth century.

It opened as a museum on 1 July 1992, seventy-six years to the day after the morning its displays are about.

The entrance is a glazed pavilion on rue Anicet Godin, set against the red brick flank of Notre-Dame de Brebières, with two guns outside as display pieces and a line of black bollards along the kerb. The window carries the name in three languages: MUSÉE SOMME 1916, then The Somme Trench Museum and Schützengräben an der Westfront, and under those The underground Museum and Das Untergrundmuseum. Behind the glass a mannequin in horizon blue stands with his kit bag. It opens from nine to six, daily apart from a few winter holidays.

📸 Cover: the entrance pavilion on rue Anicet Godin, under the brick flank of the basilica, with the display guns outside. Alf van Beem, 4 September 2013, CC0. Second image: the same frontage, with flags and the signpost to the museum. Raimond Spekking, 1 January 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0. Both via Wikimedia Commons.