The Syrian National Museum
Two paces from the Barada, near the grounds of the Damascus International Fair, in a romantic quarter with its
big trees and in an architectural decoration provided by two Ottoman religious monuments, the Syrian National Museum
will indeed be one of the vivid moments of your discovery of Syria. For example, when you find yourself in front
of the entrance of an Omayyad Palace of the Palmyranian desert, reconstituted here with its fine stucco lace works,
or when you cross the door with heavy stone panels of a Palmyranian apogee (underground tomb) with its gazing statues,
or also when you decipher a message written in pictures on the walls of a 3rd century synagogue of a Roman city
on the Euphrates banks, or, if you read history in the iridescence of some Roman or Arab glass works, you will
enjoy your marvellous journey through time and space.
The Museum is divided into five parts: Prehistoric section, Oriental section, Greco-Roman and Byzantine section,
Arab-Islamic section, and a modem art gallery. All these sections, except the art gallery, which is on the first
floor, are on the ground floor. From April to September, visiting hours are from 8 am to 1 pm. and from 4 to 7
pm. The Museum is closed on Tuesdays.
Facing the Museum, the Tekyeh Sulaymanieh offers a very attractive frame to the War Museum. This Tekyeh, (Convent
and hospice) is a holy foundation built due to the generosity of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent who
ordered its erection in the 16th century on the location of a famous palace with black and ochre stone bases named
Qasr EI-Ablaq, built by Baybars in the 13th century. Collections of the War Museum have been arranged since 1957
in the old kitchens and eating rooms of the Tekyeh, just opposite the mosque, an edifice characterizing Ottoman
architecture with a prayer-room shaped like the letter T, preceded by a gallery topped with sharp minarets. At
the sides of the enchanting gardens separating the sacred part from the secular part of the Tekyeh, are cells which
were occupied by students who went to the Madrassa, a school of Koranic theology located immediately behind. Today
the madrassa is an exhibition place for Damascene handicrafts.
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