A few thousand years from now, archaeologists will find a bizarre concrete sculpture in sediment layers at the bottom of the future European Sea. Round, organic shapes, a square box with ready-made chambers, pipes, and a relief in the soil. Totally different from the concrete boxes they found before. They will unwittingly rediscover the mystery of the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie. Later people will wonder what this Stonehenge must have been for. For The Waterline Museum, it will be the crowning glory.
Thursday 8 October saw the opening of the Waterline Museum, and it is a marvel of architecture and landscape art. At the Fort near Vechten, the second-largest fortification[hints] the Fort near Rhijnauwen, a few kilometres away, is just slightly larger. [/hints] of the New Dutch Waterline, a large museum has risen in three years. Although that's a misnomer. For the Waterlinie Museum was not built out of the ground, but ín it, using a method hitherto unimagined in ordinary architecture. [hints]All the walls and floors were cast in one go. A formwork was made for the entire museum, and all sockets and pipes had to be laid in advance. then the concrete was poured into the entire formwork at once. A company specialising in bridges and viaducts had to be used for this method[/hints].
I remember the Fort from the days when it had just escaped neglect by the Ministry of Defence. A beautiful, imposing frayed edge, a 17-hectare exploration area where you could get hopelessly lost after only thirty metres of walking. Old corridors, collapsed casemates, overgrown gun turrets gave it a mystery, and I was terrified that the megalomaniac construction cranes that appeared later would spoil that mystery forever.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Apart from a newly dug trench to make the fort accessible from a particularly cleverly designed car park, nothing has changed to the unsuspecting visitor. OK, the vegetation has been made neater, earthen ramparts have been restored to their original form, but otherwise the fort looks intact. The wonder is behind the door of the 10th bunker. The back wall of that bunker has been breached. It forms the entrance to a magnificently light yet imposing space, a large courtyard and atmospheric museum rooms of which no wall is straight.
The museum is built into the clay body that forms the fort. From the air it looks spectacular, from the outside it is invisible, once inside it is a modern temple to history. Actually like the entire waterline that is.
In her opening remarks, Deputy Pennaerts spoke of a mysterious 'fortress virus' that had infected her too, in the 10 years it took to conceive and build the museum. And that this is no joke, I have already experienced first hand. The fortress virus creeps up on you after just a few visits, or actually on the first visit. It is the feeling of being in a place that is completely separate from the rest of the world. The A12, which is just a few metres from the moat, sounds like a distant stream with gurgling water. The silence within the earthen ramparts is striking. You can experience it at any fort, but at that at Vechten it is strongest because it is so huge.
Go experience it, and meanwhile learn all about the huge project that was the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, and all about how it may have really saved us from the horrors of the First World War after all. [hints]The Waterlinie went into operation in 1914, and remained active for four years, but was actually already no longer able to withstand the artillery shells used in the First World War. It is likely, however, that the Germans did not fancy getting their feet wet, and therefore respected Dutch neutrality. [/hints]. In any case, you shouldn't think about how a trench war like the one near Flemish Ypres would also have played out in the sodden clay behind Utrecht. In knee-deep water.
The Waterline Museum is open all days of the week, Fort near Vechten is free to enter. Information: waterliniemuseum.co.uk
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