A couple of days ago I got contacted by Al Salam Palace asking me if I’d be interested in coming in the next day for a tour of the new museum. I’d been trying to figure out how to get early access ever since the museum was inaugurated earlier in the month, so even though I had a lot of work at the office, I couldn’t say no.
Al Salam Palace was built in the late 1950s and was used to accommodate visiting heads of state. During the 1990 invasion, the palace was completely destroyed and stayed abandoned for years until the restoration project started back in 2013 to turn it into a museum. The palace is located right next to JACC and consists of three main museums:
Museum of Kuwait’s History through its Rulers
Museum of Al Salam Palace History
Museum of the Civilizations that inhabited Kuwait
When I first got to the palace I was pretty surprised at how much security there was. After confirming I was on the list to get into the museum, security at the gate had to make a second call to check and see if I was allowed to bring in my camera since they have a very strict no photography policy right now. I was then escorted into the palace by a security guard and handed over to another security guard who waited with me until the palace team met me. Security personnel were also scattered all around the museum and some rooms even had 24-hour guards. I later came to understand it was because of the amount of rare and priceless items exhibited all around.
When I was invited to visit the museum I had the impression I was gonna get a quick walkaround of the premises, but instead, I was actually given a full and very informative guided tour of all three museums with all their exhibits. Unlike other museums in Kuwait, Al Salam Palace will be a strictly guided tour affair once it opens up to the public. The tours would start every 30 minutes and there would be two kinds, a quick version which would take around 30 minutes and just cover the most important subjects, and a longer 90-minute tour covering the whole museum in greater detail. My tour yesterday took 90 minutes and we didn’t even watch all the videos scattered all around the exhibits. It’s a pretty big place with lots of information and a lot to see so I’d imagine they might have tours even longer than 90 minutes once they open.
There is a lot to cover in this post but I’m going to try and condense it so I don’t bore you with too much information. Firstly you’ll notice a limited amount of photos in this post. The reason for this is that the museum doesn’t want to reveal too much right now because they want people to eventually come and see the place for themselves, without any spoilers. I was asked if I could limit the photos I take of the exhibition spaces and I wasn’t allowed to record any videos, I didn’t mind both those requests since I wasn’t planning on taking photos of the actual exhibits, and I was honestly there for myself first, blog second (sorry guys).
The thing is I’ve always been fascinated with the palace and I was even lucky enough to visit it and photograph it before the reconstruction started. One of the things I was curious about was how the museum would be restored and thankfully, they managed to restore the museum to its original state.
The whole ground level of the museum is basically an exact copy of how the palace originally was before it was destroyed. Everything from the mosaics on the wall to the marble on the floor was restored with the same material previously used. Even the heads of state welcome room and the special room built for Queen Elizabeths II’s visit in 1979 (pictured above) was also recreated. The large and iconic chandelier that hangs in the main hall of the palace was event sent abroad to be fully restored and now looks incredible again.
Al Salam Palace material moodboard on display in one of the exhibits
I was extremely impressed by how detailed they were with the restoration and I wish more older historic buildings in Kuwait were restored in a similar manner.
Moving on to the actual exhibits, like everything else in the palace so much effort was put into the details of the exhibits as well. For example, in one display there were replicas of different spices on display that used to be imported to Kuwait back in the old days, but when you come up to the display you can actually smell the spices because they had a hidden smell machine. Another thing that caught my attention were all the old books on display around the exhibits, books that were written by explorers who came across Kuwait over a hundred years ago. From my personal experience, I know how difficult it is to source these kinds of books and how much of a waiting game you need to play for specific books to enter the market place. But books are just one aspect of the exhibit, there are multiple examples throughout the museum of extremely rare sourced items like Kuwait’s first Baiza coin which only two are known to still exist today, to more current items like Sheikh Jaber’s iconic sunglasses. I asked the museum manager how they were able to source all the items because many must have been stolen during the invasion. Turns out a lot of effort was made to find and retrieve stolen items while others were stored in boxes and forgotten about or were donated by families who had them in their private collection.
There are a number of video presentations throughout the exhibit where they recreated historical moments from Kuwait’s history, and they all looked like expensive productions with proper sets, actors, wardrobe and special effects. I even got to watch a trailer of a short film they produced on the 1990 invasion and it looked like such an incredible film. One scene gave me goosebumps, there are these iconic photos of a British Airways plane completely destroyed on the runway of Kuwait’s Airport and they had that exact scene in the trailer but it was as if the original scene was shot with video with smoke billowing out of the plane wreckage. In another scene we were onboard an American tank, first-person perspective heading towards a burning oil field, the fact the room we were in had a super wide 180-degree screen helped engross me into the film even more. I can’t wait to watch the whole thing.
After going through the main museums we headed downstairs into the basement which housed the museum’s digital library. The space looked like a scene from a sci-fi movie and once open would give visitors access to everything in the museum from the books on display to all the films and more. Everything would also be available online to access but with some restrictions like only parts of the book would be accessible instead of the whole book.
I was really curious about the museum before visiting it, I had heard it was going to be about Kuwait and wasn’t sure if there was enough interesting content to display or even new content that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. But I ended up leaving extremely impressed, it was obvious the people behind the project really cared about the restoration of the palace and really put a lot of time into all the exhibits. The museum is currently starting the training program for all the guides while also finalizing some details in the different exhibits. The museum is not open at the moment, but the aim is to have it ready for the public sometime in October of this year. For now you can follow the museum on instagram @aspm.kw
