Dinant on the Meuse river in Belgium is the place for sax maniacs looking for a weekend break. It’s the birthplace of Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone.

La Maison de Monsieur Sax on Rue Sax is an “interpretative centre” offering an Aerophone Trail, telling the story of the sax family and the extraordinary one of its eccentric father.

The son of a musical instrument maker, the flute-playing Adolphe was rather accident-prone.

As a child he swallowed a needle, mistook sulphuric acid for milk, got maimed in an explosion and fell down stairs and out of windows a lot.

As an adult he survived assassination attempts, the burning down of his factory, legal suits and bankruptcy, but still found time to patent 50 inventions – including a cannon.

Three-metre high saxophone sculptures are seen in the town during the Europa Sax festival in 2011.

Outside his museum a statue of the famous organologist sits cross-legged , arms over the back of the seat, presumably composing the 19th century equivalent of Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street sax solo.

The centre features declaration of love for the sax. Berlioz was one of the earliest champions of the controversial instrument.

Dinant also has the Maison de la Pataphonie, or Museum of Magical Solutions.

This is where poly-instrumentalist Max Vandervorst gives concerts on spoons, buckets, keys and bicycle bells as well as showing people how to make a bicycle handlebar flute.

He serenades visitors with a garden hose and gives recitals on his bouchetelle (bottle organ).

Vandervorst also plays the lithophone (two rock castanets) and believes you can make music with anything, proving it by composing Concerto For Two Bicycles and Sonata For Tin.

He and Adolphe Sax should be as famous as fellow Belgians Matisse and Tintin creator Herget.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Sax’s birth on November 6 (he died of lip cancer and was buried in Paris in 1894) Brussels’s Musical Instruments Museum (created in 1877), is hosting Sax200 until January 11.

The exhibition showcases 170 saxophones, including those of Bill Clinton, Coleman Hawkins and Dexter Gordon.

The sax debuted at Brussels Industrial Exhibition in 1841 but was kept behind a curtain so envious rivals could not see it

On display are Sax’s original designs and blueprints: it shows his first patent was for a bass clarinet at the age of 24.

The sax debuted at the Brussels Industrial Exhibition in 1841 but was kept behind a curtain so that Sax’s envious rivals could not see what produced such original, pioneering sounds.

After much litigation and several threats to his life over copyright issues, the sax was eventually patented in 1846.

The exhibition features other members of Sax’s single-reed woodwind family as well as mouthpieces, keyed bugles, a six-valve, seven-bell trombone and Sax’s “ophicleide”, a large, conical tuba. The museum contains 7,000 instruments, including 60 bagpipes, 100 accordions, 80 bird whistles, Lombardian panpipes, glass harmonicas, Russian serpents, a crwth (Welsh lyre), a dimpilipoto (Caucasian double drum) and a wawa (Mons bullroarer).

The sax is still officially banned by the Vatican. In 1930 Pope Pius X banned it from sacred music, while the Nazis saw it as the epitome of American ‘jungle music’.

Stalin even rounded up sax players and sent them to Siberia – making it as brassy as Belgium.

Find out more

For more information about the Sax200 exhibition, contact the Museum of Musical Instruments in Brussels by e-mailing info@mim.be or go to www.sax200.be.

Tickets cost €12.