My trip to the Dubai Museum!
Today I have decided to visit Dubai's theoretical rival to our very own Ras Al Khaimah museum, the Dubai Museum. The Dubai Museum is located opposite to the Grand Mosque on Al Fahidi street in Dubai, and as you can tell from the extremely creative name, it is dedicated to talking all about Dubai. Much like the RAK Museum, the Dubai Museum is based inside a fort from the olden days, and as a matter of fact the fort that it is located in, called the Fahidi fort, was originally built about two hundred years ago and is the oldest surviving building in Dubai. Also like the RAK Museum the fort that the Dubai Museum calls home has changed purpose quite a bit, originally built as a ruler's palace, it then became a defensive structure, then a munitions cache, then a prison, and finally in 1971 (the year the UAE was born) it was re-opened as a museum. Then even after all that it was still changed again in 1995 to add a massive underground portion, that I think makes up almost two thirds of the modern day museum.
So this is the first place on this blog that I have visited solo and I must say it was definitely a different experience. At the time I went to the museum it was FULL of people including several whole tour buses that seemed to pull in all together at the exact same time I got there (coincidence?). When you first walk into the museum you are automatically squeezed into a medium sized hallway/room that has a ticket counter and the entrance into the museum on one side, and a couple cannons on the other. Saying that the entrance to the "museum" is on that side might not be technically true because the while the whole building is considered a museum, the real museum is underground while the upper part is more distinguishable as Al Fahidi Fort which is what the building's name is. So after getting your little ticket (which is pretty cheap) you walk through the entrance into the courtyard of the fort, with a couple traditional fishing boats and some other stuff on display in little fenced-off corners. On the right is a door that leads into a small showroom that I didn't manage to see (cuz it was too crowded) and on the left is a long hallway full of showcases.
After you're done with that hallway there is one room left to go in, and this room houses the spiral staircase that takes you underground into the real museum. Everything gets real dark real quick and other than the occasional dim lights the series of hallways encased in different displays must be navigated using the display lighting and some amount of intuition. I'm not gonna lie, it was kinda spooky, and especially when people were going different directions and some were stopping and some were speeding up it could get pretty stressful. Although the first rule written in the list of rules outside the fort is "no crowding in the hallways", there's just no way that the huge amount of people there would be able to not crowd a museum that consists of almost only hallways. At the end of the day everyone tried to be as civil as possible and there never was anything like a stampede or anything.
So as I mentioned the underground museum is pretty much just a bunch of hallways snaking around in different directions with artifacts, videos, and a plethora of creepy mannequins on display on either side of the beaten path. The museum starts off by putting you in a room/hallway that contains a bunch of facts written on the wall and some official documents, telling the story of Dubai from its birth to the modern era. Then you enter the exhibit part of the museum which of course is the majority, the floor becomes sandy and the walls subside to make way for windows that look in to videos and recreations of different areas of everyday life in old Dubai.
After you go through a few corridors of exhibits you enter a big room (not a hallway) that is dedicated to pearl diving, which as you'll know (if you read my RAK Museum post) was the UAE's biggest money maker before oil.
Upon leaving this room you go back into the land of corridors, except this time instead of old Dubai the exhibits on either side of you are dedicated to archeological digs and their discoveries in Dubai. This is probably my favorite part of the museum obviously because it's got archeology and history which I really love, and the mix of creepy mannequins and cool artifacts is really fun.
After the archeology hallways end, you enter one last hallway that showcases some writings and maps and other stuff like that, then you finally reach the end which is a massive room (to make up for the hallways) that's full of artifacts from the ruler's personal collection. Then of course there is a gift shop, and another spiral staircase that takes you right to the door where you exit straight onto the side of the main road.
All in all the Dubai Museum was pretty cool, I know at the start of this post it may have seemed like I was pooping on it a bit but that's mostly because of how crowded it was. If nothing else the crowd should actually be a good point because it shows that the museum is broadly considered to be a good one. Anyway I hope y'all enjoyed, make sure to check out the museum yourself if you're ever in town and I'll see you guys next post.