The ludicrously cheap entry charge of EUR1.50 enables you to visit this extraordinary museum of…read morewashing. Yes, washing.
It makes sense, though. I was expecting to conned into a viewing of broken washing machines piled up in somebody's old garage. However, Spa being the home of a luxury thermal spa, there was always a market for doing the laundry of all those towels and fluffy dressing gowns generated by spa guests. And so this museum aims to describe the flip side of Spa and its trade.
It does it admirably, too. You get guided round the museum by a volunteer who is guaranteed to be shiny-eyed and passionate about the subject - and if you didn't enter the museum a washing machine nerd, you are guaranteed to leave as one. Every room shows models of people doing their laundry through the ages, from medieval times to the present day. There is a room dedicated to irons and presses - you can even admire a tie shaped metal object that you side ties on to for steaming - and another to different sorts of mangles and crucifixes made out of clothes pegs.
It's all too easy to mock this very obscure-sounding museum. But it is a collection that has been lovingly assembled over 11 years, and it well deserves a visit. Young children will love it too. Oh, and it's housed in Europe's oldest casino building, a setting that doesn't quite chime with the humble theme.
