Dubai Museum, National museum in Bur Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Dubai Museum sits inside Al Fahidi Fort in Bur Dubai and displays objects from daily life, weapons, musical instruments and equipment for sea trade across several levels. The underground galleries contain reconstructed rooms, old maps and installations that illustrate life in the region.
Al Fahidi Fort was built in several phases, with its oldest tower dating to around 1787; it guarded the landward approaches to the town and served as the headquarters of the Ruler of the emirate, and also as a garrison and a prison. In 1969 Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum asked Kuwait to send a museum expert, and the museum opened in 1971. It was restored under Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, and a renovation was carried out in 2021.
The name Al Fahidi recalls an old trading settlement, while inside reconstructed lanes show how merchants displayed goods and craftspeople worked. Visitors walk through rooms with figures in traditional dress acting out everyday scenes from the time before oil.
The galleries are accessible via a spiral staircase leading down to the lower levels where audiovisual displays and showcases stand. The entrance sits near Ghubaiba metro station and is within walking distance from the old quarter.
In one of the rooms stands an old wooden boat once used for pearl diving that shows the construction of local vessels. The walls of the lower gallery carry photographs from the 1960s capturing the Creek and its surroundings before the great expansion.
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