The Cycling Museum was founded in 1985 as part of the earlier Municipal Museum of Roeselare. The city of Roeselare took that decision because the region can be seen as ‘the cradle of the flandriens’. A lot of flandriens and racing cyclists are born in the region. The municipality proper has known a lot of popular racing cyclists for example Odiel Defraeye, the first Belgian winner of the Tour of France and several world-champions: Jean-Pierre Monseré, Benoni Beheyt, Patrick Sercu, Freddy Maertens… In the beginning, the museum only showed a few old bicycles and organised an exhibition in summer.