Once the pride of Kuwait, and one of the most important collections of Islamic art in the world until the Iraqi invasion, the National Museum remains a shadow of its former self and the interminable reconstruction works are still nowhere near completion. At the time of writing, only two rooms, containing a few archaeological finds and some displays of sextants and colonial-era gramophones, were open to the public.
The museum was ransacked and largely emptied during the 1990 Iraqi invasion, and it has been under almost complete reconstruction for the past decade. Things here can only get better.
The quaint Popular Traditional Museum – variously described as the Heritage Museum and the Culture Museum – is in Building 2, at the rear of the museum complex. It illustrates daily life in pre-oil Kuwait by means of a diorama of full-size figures going about their various business – be sure to see the bead maker and what the museum booklet describes as the ‘men’s over-robe tailor’.
Buses 12 and 16 (departing from the main bus station) stop a couple of blocks from the museum complex.
