Damascus Museum Reopens a Month after Assad's Fall

                                     Museum reopens                            
        

 
AFP, 'Safe from looting, Damascus museum reopens a month after Assad's fall' France24.com 08/01/2025  

The national museum in Damascus reopened its doors on Wednesday for the first time since Islamist-led forces took control of the capital and ousted former president Bashar al-Assad. Remarkably, the museum and its collection remain intact.

On December 8, as Assad fled and rebel forces advanced on the capital, many soldiers and police loyal to the deposed government abandoned their posts. With security forces gone and checkpoints unmanned, looters took the opportunity to ransack the central bank, government ministries, and other public buildings.

The Museum's staff acted quickly to protect the collections.

"We firmly shut the museum's iron doors when we realized the situation had become unstable," said Mohamed Nair Awad, head of the national antiquities authority.

Despite the chaos, Awad and his team acted quickly, reaching out to the new authorities, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. "They sent fighters to protect the museum," Awad explained, adding that the intervention ensured its survival.

On Wednesday, members of the public strolled through the museum, marveling at its preserved collection—a poignant symbol of resilience amidst turmoil. The museum had been closed for six years during Syria's civil war, which broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests, to protect its precious artefacts from violence or looting. It reopened in 2018, after Assad clawed back control of large swathes of the country.