Red Star Line Museum

The Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp is located in the original departure warehouses of the Red Star Line, through which approximately two million migrants travelled to North America between 1873 and 1934. The museum combines a maritime collection on the operations of the Red Star Line with a substantial body of biographical migration heritage. Oral history is central to its work.

The Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp is located in the original departure warehouses of the Red Star Line, through which approximately two million migrants travelled to North America between 1873 and 1934. Within these buildings, primarily third class passengers underwent medical inspections and administrative procedures before embarkation. The museum combines a maritime collection on the operations of the Red Star Line with a substantial body of biographical migration heritage. Oral history is central to its work. Through recorded life story interviews, the museum documents personal experiences of departure, journey, and settlement, including contemporary migration to and from Belgium. By connecting historical transatlantic departures with present day mobility, and by preserving testimonies alongside personal objects and photographs, the museum presents migration as both a structured historical reality and a lived human experience that continues today.