Museum sights in Middle East
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Bauhaus Centre
Bauhaus fans will want to stop by the Bauhaus Centre which is loaded with souvenirs and artwork. The centre runs a Bauhaus city tour on Fridays.
Bauhaus style offers simplicity and egalitarianism, designed by architects who carried socialist ideals with them from Europe to Israel. One result of their collective beliefs is the flat roof, intended to be a communal area for all the residents of each building. Of the 4000 Bauhaus-style buildings in the city, just 360 have been renovated, the rest crumbing in the salty, humid sea air, which is not kind to the plaster used for the building façades. Despite its Unesco status, there are no public funds for the restoration of buil…
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National Archaeological Museum
The National Archaeological Museum is just northwest of the Temple of Hercules. It has a good collection of items spanning all eras of Jordanian and regional history, ranging from 6000-year-old skulls from Jericho to Umayyad period artwork. It also boasts some examples of the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran in 1952, a copy of the Mesha Stele and assorted artefacts from Petra and Jerash. Most exhibits are well labelled in English.
Pride of place are three of the Ain Ghazal statues, which date back to 6500 BC as some of the world's earliest sculpture. Finds from the Citadel itself include the head from a statue of the Greek goddess Tyche and some Egyptian-style carvings.
Al…
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Al-Tayibat City Museum for International Civilisation
Don't be put off by the grandiose name: Al-Tayibat City Museum for International Civilisation definitely merits a visit. The vast palace contains over 300 rooms crammed with a collection built over a local merchant's lifetime.
The four-floor collection ranges from exquisite Islamic manuscripts and old coins to stunning furniture and pottery (some of it bought from international art houses). Exhibits are accompanied by good captions and information panels, as well as a few dioramas.
Note that, unfortunately, it can't open for less than 10 people; try and form a group or telephone to join one.
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Museum of Islamic Arts
Rising from its own purpose-built island, the monumental Museum of Islamic Arts, designed by the renowned architect IM Pei, is shaped like a postmodern fortress, with minimal windows and a 'virtual' moat. With an avenue of palm trees extending along the approach road from the corniche, it makes a bold statement about a capital that has matured into one of the most culturally engaged cities in the region.
The museum houses the largest collection of Islamic arts in the world. It also includes exhibition halls, a gallery, library and restaurant.
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Nazareth Village
If you're having trouble imagining Jesus doing anything miraculous amid the bustle of modern Nazareth, then step back 2000 years at Nazareth Village. Everyday life and commerce in a traditional Galilean village has been duly reconstructed with actors in period clothing leading tours of the working farm. Leave any nightmares of tacky olde worlde historical theme parks at the door - it's well done and worth a stop. It's a 15-minute walk due west from the basilica, just beyond Al-Wadi al-Jawani St.
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Azze Hrawe
From the Church of the Girdle of Our Lady, follow the road that heads off to the north, taking the first right for the Azze Hrawe, a Mamluk-era residence of impressive size. It was being restored at the time of research and should soon open to the public as a National Folklore Museum. There's a beautiful big courtyard with a fountain and a liwan (summer room) featuring exquisite carved-wood decoration. Don't hesitate to knock on the door if it's closed; nobody minds you snooping around.
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Carpet Museum
That's an image you'll find repeated as both carpet and giant wood-inlay works in the separate Carpet Museum, where rugs range from beautiful classics through to garish coral gardens and a Tabriz-made carpet-portrait of WWI bogey-man Kaiser Wilhelm II. Tying the staggering 30 million knots for Seven Beloved Cities took 14 years. Upstairs, beside the shoe-deposit counter, is a two-room Calligraphy Gallery displaying priceless Korans, many dating back over a millennium.
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National Jewels Museum
The National Jewels Museum which is owned by the Central Bank but actually housed underneath the central branch of Bank Melli, is probably the the biggest tourist drawcard in Tehran. If you’ve already visited the art gallery at the Golestan Palace, you will have seen the incredible jewellery with which the Safavid and Qajar monarchs adorned themselves. Come here to gawp at the real things.
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Golestan Palace Complex
In what was once the heart of Tehran is this monument to the glories and excesses of the Qajar rulers. A short walk south from Imam Khomeini Sq, the Golestan Palace complex is made up of several grand buildings set around a carefully manicured garden. Admission isn’t expensive but, annoyingly, you must buy a separate ticket for each building, and all at the front gate.
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Army Museum
The Army Museum has a fascinating collection of military hardware from the Bronze Age to the near present. Exhibits range from flint arrowheads to a pile of the twisted remains of planes shot down in the 1973 war with Israel.
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National Museum of Iran
The modest National Museum of Iran is no Louvre, but it is chock-full of Iran’s rich history and should be on every visitor’s list of things to see in Tehran.
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National Museum
The most important of Syria's museums is the National Museum, and you'll get more out of Syria's archaeological sites if you take in the museum before and after your visits to the sites.
Purchase your ticket at the gate then stroll through the shady sculpture garden, best appreciated after seeing the museum proper.
Enter through the main gate of Qasr al-Heir al-Gharbi, a desert palace west of Palmyra dating from AD 688, the time of the Umayyad caliph Hisham. The gate was transported to Damascus stone by stone and reconstructed as part of the museum façade.
Within the museum, the exhibits are presented thematically and grouped into preclassical, classical and Islamic sectio…
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National Museum
Aleppo's National Museum , in the middle of town opposite the tourist office, is rather nondescript apart from the extraordinary colonnade of giant granite figures that fronts the entrance. Standing on the backs of stylised creatures are wide-eyed characters, replicas of pillars that once supported the 9th-century-BC temple-palace complex at Tell Halaf, near the border with Turkey in the northeast of the country.
From the entrance hall the exhibits were displayed chronologically in an anticlockwise direction, but at the time of research the museum was undergoing extensive 'renovation', which was being conducted with scant concern for safety and little respect for the arte…
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Tareq Rajab Museum
Housed in the basement of a large villa, this exquisite ethnographic museum should not be missed. It was assembled as a private collection of Islamic art by Kuwait's first minister of antiquities and his British wife. A pair of ornate doors from Cairo and Carl Haag's 19th-century painting of Lady Jane Digby el-Mesreb of Palmyra, who lived in tents in the winter and a Damascus villa in the summer, mark the entrance to an Aladdin's cave of beautiful items.
There are inlaid musical instruments, suspended in glass cabinets; Omani silver and Saudi gold jewellery; headdresses from the humble prayer cap to the Mongol helmet; costumes worn by princesses and by goatherds; necklace…
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National Museum of Beirut
Once situated on a strategically important intersection of the former Green Line, the must-see National Museum of Beirut has an impressive collection of archaeological artefacts, statuettes and sarcophagi. Every hour, between 09:00 and 16:00, the museum screens 'Revival,' a fascinating short documentary on how staff saved the collection from the destruction of the civil war and subsequently restored the museum to its former glory.
The easiest way to get to the museum is to either take a 15-minute walk from Sodeco Square along Rue de Damas (part of the former Green Line), or hail a service taxi and ask for Musee or the Hippodrome.
Inside, the exhibits are organised from p…
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Yazd Water Museum
For at least 2000 years Iranians have been digging qanats (underground water channels) to irrigate crops and supply drinking water. To build a qanat you first need to find an underground water source. This source could be more than 100m deep, but as the whole system is reliant on gravity the source must be higher than the final destination. Then you dig a tunnel just wide and tall enough to crawl along, so the water can flow across an extremely shallow gradient to its destination.
The mounds of soil you'll see in long lines across the desert are the top of wells, dug to dispose of excavated soil and allow ventilation.
Because of the hazards and expense of constructing a q…
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Main Museum
Bequests and donations from the faithful fill the Haram’s fascinatingly eclectic museums. The Main Museum kicks off with chunks of now-superseded shrine-décor interspersed with contemporary sporting medals presented by pious athletes. The basement stamp collection includes a 1983 commemorative featuring the ‘Takeover of the US Spy Den’. The 1st-floor Visual Arts Gallery offers you the opportunity to shower money (or hats) down onto the top of the Holy Shrine’s fourth zarih tomb encasement (replaced in 2001). Amid seashells and naturalist landscape-paintings of Surrey, notice Mahmood Farshchian’s modern classic Afternoon of Ashura. It’s a grief-stricken depictio…
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Aqaba Castle
Aqaba Castle, measures around 50m by 50m although it is unusual in having sides of slightly uneven length. It is worth looking around as it has been partially reconstructed and gives some sense of its original form. The first castle may have been built by the Crusaders in the 13th century, but most scholars attribute its construction to the Mamluks during the reign of the sultan Qansur al-Ghuri (1510-17), as attested by the attractive relief inscriptions in Arabic inside the entrance gate.
In one of the eastern rooms off the main courtyard are further inscriptions suggesting that the castle was renovated and enlarged by the Ottomans in both 1587 and 1628. In subsequent ce…
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National Museum
Once the pride of Kuwait, this museum is still under restoration. The centrepiece of the museum, the Al-Sabah collection, was one of the most important collections of Islamic art in the world. During the Iraqi occupation, however, the exhibition halls were systematically looted, damaged or set fire to.
Following intense pressure from the UN, the majority of the museum's collection was eventually returned, but many pieces had been broken in transit, poorly stored and, some suggest, deliberately spoiled. Nonetheless, this beleaguered collection has since been displayed in London's British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York while waiting to be restored in …
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Dubai Museum
Unless some mad scientist invents a magic time-travel machine, this nifty museum is your ticket to exploring Dubai’s history, culture and traditions in an hour or so. Exhibits are housed in the 1799 Al-Fahidi Fort, considered the oldest building in Dubai and once the seat of government and residence of Dubai’s rulers.
This low-key museum tells the Dubai story with minimal fuss and plenty of charm. Start with a quick spin around the courtyard with its old-time fishing boats and traditional dwellings, including a barasti house with wind tower. Pop behind the heavy carved wooden doors to check out modest displays of instruments and handcrafted weapons before heading down…
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Al-Qurain Martyrs' Museum
Located in the residential suburb of Qurain, a 20-minute taxi ride southeast of the city centre, this small museum is a memorial to a cell of young Kuwaiti patriots who tried to resist arrest in February 1991. Early in the morning, a minibus (the one that is still parked outside) drew up outside the house. When no-one answered the door, the Iraqis bombarded the house for hours with machine guns, bombs and eventually a tank.
Nine of those under siege were captured and tortured to death, while four hid in a roof space. General Schwarzkopf, who visited the house on 14 April 1994, commented that 'when I am in this house it makes me wish that we had come four days earlier then…
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Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora
The Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora doesn't actually display any artefacts from the past. Rather, this is a good collection of models, dioramas, films and presentations chronicling the diversity of Jewish life and culture in exile. The main role of the museum, Beth Hatefutsoth in Hebrew, is to relate the unique story of the continuity of the Jewish people through exhibition, education and cultural endeavours.
Special attractions in the museum include the Feher Jewish Music Centre, the Douglas E Goldman Jewish Genealogy Centre (where visitors can register their family tree to be preserved for future generations) and a Visual Documentation Centre, which is the l…
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Rothschild Blvd
This pleasant leafy boulevard was named after the Jewish family of financiers. At one time Rothschild Blvd was the address to have. It's no longer so exalted but former glories are invoked at Independence Hall (16 Rothschild Blvd), where on 14 may 1948, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. Previous to that, the building had been the home of Meir Bizengoff, one of the founders of Tel Aviv.
Entry includes a short introductory film and a tour of the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed.
West of the junction with Allenby St, the Haganah Museum (23 Rothschild Blvd) chronicles the formation and activities of the Haganah, the military org…
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Palmyra Museum
Only the keenest of archaeologists would benefit from a visit to Palmyra's modest museum. With its poor labelling, it adds little to the experience of Palmyra. There are a few highlights, however, including a large-scale model of the Temple of Bel that gives a good impression of how the complex would have looked in its original state, and some fascinating friezes depicting camel trains and cargo ships, attesting to the importance trade played in the wealth of Palmyra.
There are some dynamic mosaics found in nobles' houses east of the Temple of Bel, including one representing a scene from the Iliad in which Ulysses discovers Achilles disguised in women's clothes, concealed…
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Cilicia Museum
The gorgeous collection of Armenian religious and cultural artefacts at the Cilicia Museum is one of Beirut's best-kept secrets. And secrets play a major role in the history of this museum, as most of the collection was smuggled out of what was known as Turkish Armenia in 1915, by monks from the Monastery of Sis in Cilicia.
Given just several days to flee the genocide by the Turks, the monks removed as much of their treasure as they could and began their dangerous overland journey, eventually arriving in Aleppo (Syria). In 1930 they finally settled in Antelias, just north of Beirut.To get to the museum, take the LCC bus 6, or any minibus going north to Jounieh and Byblos …
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