Credit: Ali Sahib, Chronicle.lu
On Sunday 14 September 2025, the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN - Naturmusée) hosted its annual Naturmusée-Fest in Luxembourg-Grund, unveiling its new visual identity and offering the public a closer look into scientific collections on biodiversity.
The festival’s origins go back almost three decades, with the first edition taking place in 1997, just a year after the MNHN’s official opening.
One of the main festival goals is to encourage visitors to learn in an engaging and playful way. The programme featured diverse activities for all ages, where participants could get involved in several educational workshops and delve into the research, collections and exhibitions, both inside the museum and in the outdoor area of the Abbaye de Neumünster (Neimënster), on topics such as nature, science, space, archaeology, theology and more.
Among the educational workshops was an activity led by Dr Guy Colling, botanist at MNHN, who demonstrated a simple method using water, a centrifuge and a microscope to show how different landscapes influence pollination patterns. This hands-on experience allowed participants to see the contrast between industrial and natural honey, with natural honey showing a much richer variety of plants. As he explained: “The honey can show us the biodiversity of the landscapes where bees were collecting.”
The pollen analysis workshop also caught the attention of Max Hahn, Luxembourg’s Minister for Family Affairs, who attended with his family and friends. “I think it’s important for the parents to show a good example and to go with kids to places like this… not only the children but also the parents can learn a lot of things,” he told Chronicle.lu.
Alongside the workshops, some visitors were spotted enjoying a meal in the food stall area, while soaking up views of the Bock Casemates, the famous network of underground tunnels and fortifications carved into the rock cliffs above the Alzette river.
As promised, the museum unveiled its new visual identity, introducing the public to the new logo. “It resembles what we are doing in the collections - like boxes which are ordinate, similar to chemical classifications of the elements, and also to the form of our building,” explained Patrick Michaely, Director of MNHN.
The director emphasised this as the first major change at the museum in the last 30 years. He explained that the museum aims to offer some new workshops each year. Among them is a standout classic introduced in 2021, where children can assemble a dinosaur from real bones.
Although the festival grounds seemed fairly full of visitors, speaking with Chronicle.lu, Mr Michaely admitted that this Naturmusée-Fest gathered a smaller public than in the previous two years, partly due to its coinciding with the start of the new school year the following day and to the foggier weather conditions.
EO
