It came with a hefty price tag. With the help of Europe and Flanders, the Province of Limburg invested €19 million in the reconstruction. But it was a much-needed investment. The old museum was simply over-run by visitors. Designed to accommodate 20,000 a year, by 2005 it was attracting five times that many. Three years after the original museum closed to the public, a new museum opened last week.

Limburg's provincial authorities had grand ideas. "The building project set out to do more than provide a museum, important as that is; it was also an urban project designed to give the city a new dynamic," says Gilbert Van Baelen, executive of the Province of Limburg. "The new path that runs right round the basilica and the adjoining museum square has created a new part of Tongeren. Plus, the building is perfectly integrated into the historical heart of the city."

The presence of a Gallo-Roman Museum in the oldest city in the country also gives a real boost to the identity of the city and region as a whole. So, in addition to the investment it made in the building, the province has provided substantial resources to promote and run the museum.

The new museum building was designed by architects De Gregorio & Partners. Together with designer Niek Kortekaas, De Gregorio was also responsible for designing the permanent exhibition.

The museum team was given the opportunity to work with the architectural team to reinterpret the building. "We thought long and hard about the way we wanted visitors to feel in the museum and how we wanted them to use the space," says museum director Carmen Willems. "The priority was to make it a beautiful place to view objects from the past. We worked together to come up with the best possible way of dividing and arranging the spaces and paid great attention to visitor flow and atmosphere."

This is evident from the layout. Covering four floors, it leads visitors on a journey of exploration through the lives of the people in the region from pre-history to the early Middle Ages.

"It's no accident that our motto is: ‘What follows is intrinsically linked to what went before'," explains museum coordinator Bart Distelmans. "These words were spoken by the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and they were our inspiration when building the exhibition." The story is illustrated with 2,200 authentic objects as well as by text, interactive animations, films, evocative reconstruction drawings, lifelike figures and scale-models. In this way, the museum hopes to meet the needs and expectations of different types of visitor.

The collections are extremely diverse. Highlights include a selection of bronze axes from 800 BC; gold coins used by the Eburones (the local tribe that defeated one of Julius Caesar's legions); early Roman sculptures; and a fourth-century Christian tomb. Children will probably be enticed by the interactive touch-screens, the short movies of how to make and throw spears and the lifelike representation of a successful Neanderthal hunt.

The new museum will continue to expand its educational activities. A great deal of work is being done on new temporary exhibitions, which helped establish the reputation of the previous museum. The first exhibition planned is Ambiorix, King of the Eburones.

The Gallo-Roman Museum is well worth a visit, although the full multi-language capabilities are not yet up and running. So unless your knowledge of Dutch is good, you might want to wait until the English, French and German guidebooks are available in mid June.

www.galloromeinsmuseum.be

Tongeren

Tongeren is called "the oldest city in Belgium" for good reason. Its history began when Roman legions passed through the region. But they didn't have it all their own way. In 54 BC, they met fierce resistance from local tribes, particularly from Ambiorix, leader of the Eburones. Ambiorix famously led his warriors to a resounding victory over one of Julius Caesar's legions.

But it was short-lived. The Romans fought back, and Ambiorix fled, eventually to re-appear in 1866 on Tongeren's market square as a three-metre bronze statue.

Flushed with success, the Romans put up a winter camp near the little-known village of Atuatuca. They must have liked it, as the Roman Empire made it into a permanent settlement, called Atuatuca Tungrorum. Thanks mainly to its location at the junction of some important Roman roads, Atuatuca Tungrorum expanded into one of the largest towns in northern Gaul.

It had typical Roman public and private buildings, streets, and a monumental town wall, remnants of which can still be seen. One of the highlights of the Gallo-Roman museum is a scale-model of Tongeren in 150 AD. It clearly shows the extent of the town walls as well as the ancient aqueduct.