National Churchill Museum and the Berlin Wall

In March 1946, only months after the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, then out of office as British prime minister, accepted an invitation from tiny Westminster College and traveled to Fulton, Missouri, accompanied by President Harry Truman, himself a Missourian. There, in the college gymnasium before a large audience, Churchill delivered an address formally titled The Sinews of Peace.

In it he warned that from the Baltic to the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent, dividing free Western Europe from the Soviet-dominated East. The phrase electrified the world and came to define the Cold War era that followed. That a speech of such historic weight was given in a small Missouri town is exactly why Fulton became the home of the national museum to Churchill.

To honor that day, the college conceived an extraordinary memorial. In London stood the Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, a seventeenth-century church designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, that had been gutted by German bombs during the Blitz and left a ruin. Rather than let it be demolished, planners arranged to move it: the surviving stones were numbered, dismantled, shipped to Missouri, and painstakingly rebuilt on the Westminster campus.

The reassembled church, restored to Wren's original design, now serves as both a working chapel and the crowning feature of the museum. It is a genuine piece of London history, a Wren masterpiece that survived war and demolition to stand in the American Midwest, and walking into it is a startling experience for anyone who knows its story.

Beneath and around the church, the National Churchill Museum tells the full story of Winston Churchill's remarkable life, from his early adventures and political career through his leadership of Britain during the Second World War and his warnings at the dawn of the Cold War. Interactive exhibits, artifacts, and documents immerse visitors in the man and the turbulent century he helped shape.

Outside stands one of the site's most powerful features: a sculpture created from actual sections of the Berlin Wall, the concrete barrier that came to embody the very iron curtain Churchill described. Carved and arranged into a work of art after the wall fell in 1989, it links Churchill's 1946 warning to the eventual collapse of the divide he foresaw, closing a circle of history right there on the Missouri lawn.

Fulton is a small central Missouri town built around its colleges, quiet and walkable, with a historic downtown. The Churchill site is its great claim to fame, drawing history-minded visitors from far away to a place they might otherwise never find, and it anchors an easy day trip from the nearby cities of Columbia and Jefferson City.

The surrounding countryside is classic Missouri River Valley, rolling farmland and river hills at the edge of the state's historic wine country. A visitor can pair the weighty history of the museum with a drive through the vineyards and river towns nearby, an unexpectedly rich itinerary springing from one speech given in one small town.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.