Museum of Civilizations in Ivory Coast, National museum in Plateau district, Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The Museum of Civilizations in Abidjan is a cultural institution with several buildings that display artworks, archaeological finds, and historical objects from West Africa. The spaces are organized to present different themes and periods of Ivorian history.

The institution started in the 1940s as a crafts center and was later transformed into a museum that documents the cultural history of the region. Over time, the collections grew to provide a broad understanding of Ivorian civilizations.

The collection displays objects from different regions of Ivory Coast, including masks, statues, and musical instruments that show how people lived and what they crafted. You can see how these items fit into everyday life and what roles they played in their communities.

The museum occupies a two-hectare site in the Plateau commune of Abidjan, so allow time to move between the exhibition hall and the building that once housed the artisans. The ethnographic, archaeological and iconographic collections come from every region of Ivory Coast, and the museum is closed on Mondays.

The museum holds about 15,210 authentic pieces, among them gold weights, slave shackles, carved doors and pottery. In April 2011, during the fighting in Abidjan, it was looted and around a hundred traditional objects were stolen. The building once housed artisans' workshops, while the administration occupied what is now the main exhibition hall.