Day out in the Museum

Today had a chance to wander around before flying back home in the afternoon. Not to lose time went to the National Museum just as it was opening at 9 am. But alas yours truly was not the first one as there were already hordes of tourists shuttled to the place in coaches waiting at the gate! Mostly were Italians and Chinese.

The museum has two major exhibition wings - the Roman and the Islamic. However, the Roman Wing is better curated as the museum recently received a massive funding of 6 million euros from the Italian government. Obviously with the rich Roman history, the Italian would favour more to curate that part of the history. In the Roman era, two great cities were formed in Syria - Palmyra and Apamea.

The Islamic exhibits nevertheless are quite interesting. Now with a better sense of the Syrian history, it was quite interesting to see the relics from the great Umayyad to subsequent dynasties in this great land.

Ironically the Ottoman Empire which ruled the land from Istanbul for more than 400 years does not really feature much in this museum. There is probably still deep resentment for those era when the Ottoman being non-Arab were the ruler of the Arab and Islamic world at that time.