Doha Photo Gallery - National Museum of Qatar Part 2

Doha has come a long way in recent years and there are now quite a good number of attractions to make this city a worthwhile destination in its own right.

The National Museum of Qatar has a visually-stimulating design that reflects the desert rose, a rock formation created by crystallizing minerals in the soil. It is even blended into the desert with the sand-coloured cladding.

Completed in 2019, it has a huge exhibition space showcasing the country and its history with vast halls and great use of technological effects to enhance the items on physical display. It should definitely be a part of your itinerary.

The idea of creating a national museum dates back to 1972, and the first iteration opened in 1975 in a palace, which has been retained and is now part of the much bigger new museum by Jean Nouvel.

The rest of the museum follows a roughly chronological timeline of Qatar's development.

Pearls were harvested for centuries in the waters here, with the centerpiece in this room being the Baroda Carpet, which was made in India for the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed with over 1.5 million pearls.

In the early 20th century, the Japanese found a way to make cultured pearls but implanting an irritant into an oyster to stimulate it to create a pearl. By World War II, these types of artificial pearls dominated the market thanks to their significantly cheaper cost. This destroyed Qatar's pearl-diving industry.

The timeline from 1500 to 1913 traces Qatar's first mention in historical documents, through interactions with Western countries and the Ottomans, to the creation of a unified country.

The country's major turning points were the collapse of the pearling industry and the discovery of oil. British geologists discovered oil in 1939 in western Qatar, and exports began a deade later. In the 1970s, natural gas was also discovered offshore.

Manufactured in India in 1935, this chair was used by Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Al Thani, Qatar's ruler from 1949-60.

Now we're back to the modern era. Completing the interior galleries, I exited out into the courtyard to see the original palace and seat of government, which was where the first museum was located from 1975 onwards.