Libya’s National Museum Reopens After 14 Years

Libya s National Museum, known as As-Saraya Al-Hamra or the Red Castle Museum, has reopened in Tripoli for the first time since the 2011 revolution that ended the four-decade rule of Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Red Castle is a symbol of Libya’s ancient, layered history, with a foundation dating to the Roman era, and significant expansions undertaken in the 1500s, 1930s, and 1980s—when the structure was first converted into a museum.

The largest museum in the North African country, it closed at the onset of Libya’s military instability, which unfolded against the dramatic wave of popular protests across Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) known as the Arab Spring. The museum directly figured into Libya’s chapter of the Arab Spring, as Qaddafi delivered an impassioned vow to defeat the NATO-backed insurgency from the castle’s ramparts.

Qaddafi was ultimately overthrown and executed on October 20, 2011, by Libyan rebel forces. The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions, Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbiebah said at a reopening ceremony earlier this month, as reported by the Daily Sabah.

Al-Dbiebah leads the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), which took power in 2021 and is the internationally-recognized governing body in Libya. The museum’s 10,000-square-meter gallery space houses mosaics, murals, sculptures, objects, and coinage spanning Libya’s prehistory, through its Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods, as well as millennia‑old mummies excavated from the archaeological sites of Uan Muhuggiag and Jaghbub.

It is considered one of the preeminent museum collections in Africa and a monument to the ancient cultural intersections that led to the continent’s modern-day map. Renovations of the museum began in 2023, with an official public reopening date set for early 2026. Until then, admission to the museum is exclusively for students. Since the fall of Qaddafi, Libya has campaigned to recover the heritage property smuggled out of the country amid the political turmoil.

Today, 21 artifacts have been repatriated to Libya from locations in France, Switzerland, and the United States, according to Mohamed Farj Shakshoki, chairperson of the board of directors of the antiquities department, per a report in Reuters. Shakshoki added that negotiations are underway to reclaim more than two dozen artifacts from Spain and Austria. Repatriation is one objective in a larger ambition to revitalize Libya’s cultural landscape, which includes five UNESCO World Heritage sites that were at previously identified as being at-risk due to the civil conflict.

In July, the Libyan delegation to UNESCO announced that one of the sites, the ancient city of Ghadames, had been removed from the list as the country stabilized its security.