The city of Hasselt is inseparable from its jenever, or Dutch gin. Every year, in October, they celebrate the Jeneverfeesten. The rest of the year, there is this national museum with an operational 19th century distillery!
| 🎫 Tickets | € 10,- (including a drink) |
| 🕐 Opening hours | 10:00 – 17:00 Closed on Mondays, on certain holidays and the largest part of January |
| ⏱️ Time needed | 90 minutes |
| 📚 What to visit? | During a tour of this museum, you pass through different parts of the historic distillery to learn about the history and the production process of the local jenever. |
Jenevermuseum
Witte Nonnenstraat 19
3500 Hasselt
Discover the collections! / Join an event!
Please be advised that many online sources are not properly available in English.
On this page…
When you step into the courtyard it feels like a cosy place, caught between the past and the present. That weirdly homely feeling sticks with you throughout. It is as if the very museum building itself is advertising the fact that a drink is best enjoyed with friends. Together.
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History
In 1426, Ida Putlincx, member of the the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance (or ‘White Sisters’), founded a cloister called ‘Sint-Catharinadal’. Since expansion works around 1478, a city farm called the Susteren Dries was connected to it by an underground passage. The cloister was dissolved during the dechristianization by the French, and the building was briefly used as a saltworks. It came into state ownership and large parts got rebuilt and turned into a barracks and military hospital. Only one original wing and the former farm remained. Both became distilleries (resp. Fryns and Stellingwerff/Theunissen) and are currently a pub restaurant and the National Jenever Museum Hasselt.
After the widow Theunissen died in 1971, a succesful campaign led to the protection (1975), purchase (1979) and restoration (1983-1987) of the distillery. The museum opened, after the works finished, in 1987. It still maintains an active distillery. It produces multiple kinds of jenever and a selection of house liquors. Visitors can taste them on-site, alongside more than 140 other Belgian jenevers from approx. 50 producers.
In 2008 the museum was a filming location for the television series ‘De Smaak van de Keyser’. The series focussed on three generations of women in a distillers family. And in 2014, the permanent collection of the museum got an extensive renovation to bring it into the 21st Century.
About Jenever
Jenever – from which modern gin was derived – is also known as genever, pekèt and Dutch gin. It is a juniper-flavoured liquor that is distilled in the European Lowlands (Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern France, and northwestern Germany). It is a type of drink with a EU and UK protected designation of origin.
The original way to produce it, was to distill moutwijn (malt wine) to 50% alcohol. As this spirit was not very palatable, they added juniper berry to improve on the flavour. It also gave the liquor (and subsequently: modern gin) its name.
Hasselt styles itself as Belgium’s jenever capital and has both the museum and a festival as well as a multitude of monuments dedicated to the drink.
Must see / Experience
The main collection encompasses four main facets:
- The industrial heritage of the Stellingwerff/Theunissen distillery;
- A 19th/20th Century distillery installation from distillery Servais (in Géromont)
- A steam engine from the St.-Salvator dairy (in Booischot)
- A grain mill and mill chair from the firemill in Overrepen and distillery Guilliams (in Jeuk)
The museum also possesses a good 30.000 pieces that all connect to Belgian liquors (distilled drinks). Part of this collection is online accessible.
