The record
A segment outside the underground air-defence bunker Western Europe built in the 1950s, now a Cold War museum.
A segment stands outside the command bunker dug into the southern flank of the Kemmelberg between 1952 and 1956, when Belgium, France, Britain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands built a coordination post for Western European air defence under the Brussels Pact. From 1963 the Belgian armed forces kept it as a wartime headquarters; it was abandoned in 1995 and opened as a Cold War museum in 2010. The pairing is exact in a way few records here manage: the object that divided the continent, standing on top of the hole the other side dug in case it went wrong.
The panel was bought, not given. In October 2019 the coordinator of Heuvelland's thirtieth-anniversary exhibition told the regional broadcaster Focus-WTV that „last year we bought a piece of the Berlin Wall and placed it on the grounds of the command bunker“, which puts its arrival in 2018; the exhibition on the fall of the Wall opened in the bunker on 3 November 2019 with a 1959 Trabant lent by the Zwevezele collector Lode Anseel. Who sold the panel, and where in Berlin it stood, is not stated.
How did it get here?
Bought in 2018 and placed on the bunker grounds, by the account of the coordinator of Heuvelland's 2019 exhibition; the seller and the segment's origin in Berlin are not stated.
Sources
Listed by the Berlin Wall Archive as #196.
Kemmel, B — The Wall Net ↗
A segment outside the former NATO command bunker.
General referenceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Command Bunker Kemmel — Toerisme Heuvelland ↗
The bunker's construction between 1952 and 1956, its Belgian headquarters role from 1963, abandonment in 1995 and reopening as a museum in 2010.
General referenceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Heuvelland herdenkt de val van de Berlijnse muur — Focus-WTV ↗
The coordinator of Heuvelland's 2019 exhibition at the Kemmel command bunker said a piece of the Berlin Wall had been bought the year before and placed on the bunker grounds.
Press reportSource accessed 2026-09-17
Stuk Berlijnse muur in Heuvelland — Focus-WTV ↗
A panel of the Berlin Wall had stood in Heuvelland since 2018, and an exhibition on the fall of the Wall opened in the Kemmel command bunker on 3 November 2019.
Press reportSource accessed 2026-09-17
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 196
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record