Located in the Syrian capital Damascus; The National Museum Of Damascus is the country’s national museum and the largest. This museum covers the entire range of Syrian history over a span of over 11 millennia, and displays various important artifacts. Established in 1919, during King Faisal’s Arab Kingdom of Syria, the museum is the oldest cultural heritage institution in Syria. The museum closed its doors in 2012 after the Syrian war engulfed Damascus and threatened its rich cultural artifacts. The museum authorities quickly unloaded more than 300,000 artifacts and hid them in secret locations to safeguard Syria’s cultural heritage from destruction and looting. After 6 years, on October 29, 2018, the museum reopened four of the museum’s five wings.

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Museum Galleries

The exhibits are arranged into five wings. The museum building has two floors as well as an outdoor display garden. The first floor houses the largest collection comprising the galleries entitles Ancient Syria, Greek and Roman/Byzantine (classical) Age and Islamic Age. The second floor has a relatively new exhibit entitled Prehistoric Age. The staircase from the classical gallery takes you to the Gold exhibit gallery. The museum includes an additional hall for contemporary art. The front garden displays a large collection of both classical and byzantine artifacts with now specific tags or information.

  • Gallery Of Prehistoric Age: Remains and skeletons from different Stone-Age periods, most notably the Neolithic period, as well as objects and finds discovered in the basin of the Orontes River, the Euphrates and Tell Ramad in southwestern Syria. [Read More] …

  • Gallery Of Ancient Syria: This includes the art of Bronze and Iron age Syria. The collection is organised into a number of exhibits from sites such as Ebla, Mari and Ugarit. The most important of these is an Ugaritic tablet, on which is the world’s first Alphabet. Other findings include written cuneiform tablets, emulates and religious sculptures from Ebla and Mari. [Read More] …

  • The wing of Classical age Syria houses the largest Greeco-Roman artifact collection on display in the country; This include sculptures, marble and stone sarcophagi, mosaics, jewelry and coinage. The findings are mainly from sites such as Palmyra, Dura Europos and Mount Al-Arab. Among the most important is the underground Palmyrene Hypogeum of Yarhai as well as the 3ed C Synagogue of Dura Europos. [Read More] …

  • Part of the classical wing in the museum; The whole of Byzantine art includes many precious early Christian manuscripts written in Syriac as well as some of the first Christian frescoes and religious icons. The Christian-Byzantine art collection is bundled under a unique category in our project. [Read More] …

  • Islamic Art Gallery: The giant facade of an 8th century Islamic palace (Qaser Al Heir Al Gharbi) has been moved and reconstructed as the museum’s main entrance. Some of the findings from Qaser Al Heir palace are also on display in the museum second floor, past the main entrance. The Islamic wing contains number of exhibits for objects dating from different periods of Islamic History. Those are featuring the many scriptures of the Quraan from the Omayyad era to the Ottomans. The Islamic art gallery also includes an 18th century reconstructed Damascene room. [Read More] …

  • The Museum’s garden: The items in the museum garden have no special classification and most of them carry no identifying tags. The main entrance of the museum has a reconstruction original work of Qasr Al-Hayr Al-Gharbi. It is currently the home of the restored Lion of Al’lat that was brought from Palmyra museum.

  • The Gold Exhibit: This exhibit has a significant collection of Jewelry and artifacts that are mainly made of precious stones and gold. A in time range it varies from the period of the bronze age to Islamic. The exhibit is located on the museum’s second flour, past the wing of classical Syria.

  • Gallery Of Contemporary art: Contains works for number of Syrian contemporary artists featuring Walid Kayalli, Nazir Nabaa, Fateh Al Mudarres and Mamdouh Qashlan.