The major stop and attraction that we plan to visit in Doha is the National Museum of Qatar. We cannot do more than one museum during the stay and the history museum won against the Museum of Islamic Art. Both of them, intentionally, are within walking distance of our hotel. So after breakfast we start walking towards the museum and soon learn the truth about Doha, it is built for cars and not for pedestrians.
There simply aren’t many pedestrians and the sidewalks are also hit and miss even in the downtown area. So we are happy when we reach a park where we can go through it instead of following the sidewalks.
A bonus of the park are also the birds and the shade. There are no exciting birds here, just some Laughing and Rock Doves as well as Common Mynas but still fun.
The major attraction for the birds is the small lake, water is at a premium in this desert country of course.
After the park we pass through some parking lots due to lack of sidewalks and finally make it to the museum. Which is on the other side of a lake with the sidewalk closed on this side, maybe the access is from the back? And yes it is, we are happy to finally make it to a place with shade and start enjoying the artwork that is outside in the park around the museum.
The museum grounds, rather interestingly, also include the Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani’s palace, the heart of Qatari national identity. And that is what we enter first, it is part of the free park and there is no official entrance. It takes us a bit even to find the right route to the museum buildings.
And then suddenly we are in the middle of the very modern museum complex. The architecture is quite breathtaking with the building opening in March 2019 right before Covid. The building was inspired by a desert rose crystal found in Qatar and you can see that in the interesting shape of the buildings.
The next challenge is finding the entrance, we don’t think we have been to a museum that we had so much issues in finding the entrance. Finally we find the ticket office and then, it is time to find where the exhibits are, this again is not that easy. First we find the gift shop and that is where we spend some time looking at the different souvenirs, some are quite fun but our luggage is full.
There are also some cafes and free exhibits but there is no clear sign and where we should use our ticket and enter. Or are we inside already? We are not sure.
Finally next to a replica of an archeologists tent we find a group of employees and we ask and yes this is the entrance. But not the exit as we will find our later. But for now that is not a concern we just want to enter and are led into a huge area with some interesting geological media exhibits on all the walls. It shows how Qatar was formed which is quite interesting to us.
It then continues through geological eras showing how crocodiles, dinosaurs and so on to mammals appeared. It is quite an interesting start of the tour and quite popular.
Here are also exhibits showing the birds and mammals of Qatar, unfortunately we won’t be able to see many of them this time as we will spend our time only in the city.
The exhibits are very well done and we almost don’t notice when the focus switches from natural wonders to historical sights.
History is also arranged chronologically starting with prehistory and then advancing across multiple rooms to modern times.
There is a lot of focus on traditions with screens explaining the various items and why they are important to Qatari culture.
Of course a lot of focus is on camels, there is a strong tradition of breeding and using camels in Qatar. We are also fascinated by a map showing the various discovery trips done by Western into the “Empty Quarter” touching also on Qatar.
Of course no tradition exhibit is complete without a falconry exhibit. This has a long tradition in Qatar and even now there are falcons sold in shops as we will learn later in the day.
Then the exhibit shifts to textiles, many of them quite colorful versus the usual clothing that women would wear here traditionally.
From here there are some stairs downwards with no information and we assume that the exhibit continues that way and it does. But it is a weird way to build from a point of accesibility, after being accesible till now you would be stuck at the upper level.
Here the exhibits start with Al Zubarah the only Unesco World Heritage Site in Qatar. There are some media exhibits and also some door and window details from the site. They are quite interesting and we would have liked to be able to visit but unfortunately there isn’t enough time.
The exhibits then go through lots of other artistic objects and even culinary traditions. Quite interesting to us.
Then we pass through another tunnel and it seems we are moving to more modern times. At least the dress exhibit seems to be aligned with how people would walk even now.
Then a large section is focused on the pearl harvesting industry of Qatar, the major industry before oil and tourism took over. There are both examples of harvesting and of objects made of those pearls like the impressive pearl carpet of Baroda with an innumerable number of precious stones including pearls. This was supposed to adorn the tomb of Mohamed and it looks the part.
The pearls were also used in many crowns used by European royalty, a selection of which are shown here.
Of course there was also war, a lot of it. It seems that the Qatari at some point or the other were in war with almost all surrounding countries. Quite a few of these wars were against Bahrain due to unclear ownership of land and islands between them. Which hopefully have been litigated since then but still they do not appear to be friends based on the exhibits.
There is, of course, also a section about the oil industry and one about the current dynasty, Thani, rulers and what each of them accomplished with the focus on the latest emir. In fact Qatar is a hereditary monarchy where the monarch holds ultimate power.
Next is an interesting interactive wall with photos scrolling constantly that you can click for more information. Quite exciting and interesting.
Al Jazeera is the focus of another exhibit area, ultimately it allows Qatar to punch seriously above its weight in matters of news control and propaganda. And then we are out in a completely different area of the complex with no signs pointing us back to where we entered or where we should exit the complex.
With some difficulty we find our way back to the main courtyard and start exploring random doors. One of them is quite interesting, a temporary exhibit trying to raise money for a future car museum in Doha. There are only a few cars exhibited now but for free it is worth a stop.
We are quite hungry by now so we enter a cafe to eat some local sweets. The cafe is quite futuristic and even has a robotic server that we see serving another table but not us.
The food and the drinks however are quite good and traditional and refreshed we are ready to move on.
As we exit we decide to visit Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani palace in more depth and to our surprise one of the rooms is completely furnished and you can enter it completely free and explore.
Unfortunately it is the only furnished room, there are a few more open but most are closed with admittedly beautiful doors.
Soon we find our path through the maze of buildings and see the exit from the complex in front of us after this brief exploration of the interesting palace.
But before exiting the complex we want to also investigate the dhow near the entrance. Initially we think it is part of the museum but exploring more closely we discover it is actually part of the kids playground, whoops. So now it is time to exit and make our way to find a geocache and get a better view of the modern Doha skyline from the Museum of Islamic Arts garden nearby.
