Visiting the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad
The Iraqi National Museum is open again (after a several-year closure due to security issues followed by Covid-19). It is a brilliant museum full of amazing exhibits and is definitely not to be missed.
The museum is in Baghdad’s Allawi district and is well-known, so the word museum (متحف ‘muthaf’ in Arabic) said to any taxi driver should get you there easily.
Iraqi military personnel (usually a military vehicle and three or four soldiers and/or military police) are stationed at the gates and you can say hello or just walk right past them. As soon as you enter through the gates, on the right-hand side there is a reception area and security check, with a separate curtained section section for women, immediately after reception. They might ask you to leave items like laptops there.
The museum (the building on the far left) is set in pretty grounds and the entrance is at the far end of these, so you walk through the garden to reach the entrance. It’s not particularly clear or sign-posted but you may be directed towards it.
At the entrance into the main building, there is a security scan for bags, and you will probably be asked to place bags in special lockers, in a luggage storage area behind the scanner. You may take your phone and/or camera into the museum.
Photography is permitted but filming is not and requires special permission.
Beside (and to the left of) the luggage storage room is another room with a tiny sign indicating guides. These are completely free (tips are not required or expected and are also not encouraged). The museum has quite a few guides, several of whom speak decent English and they will do their best to accommodate you.
Guides are well worth taking, if one is available as, although exhibit signs in the museum are in Arabic and English, these are still quite limited in terms of historical detail, and the guides generally have all sorts of extra fascinating snippets of information. If your time is limited, they can also help make sure you don’t miss any highlights, as the museum is large.
After the security scanner, on the left, is the ticket booth. Entry costs IQD25,000 for foreigners and IQD3,000 for Iraqis. There is a student discount. This definitely applies to Iraqi students of course but we couldn’t establish whether it also applies to international students. If you have an international student card, it could be worth a shot.
The Assyrian and Hatra halls are deemed the best and they are truly remarkable. Highlights are too many to mention and we hope you will enjoy discovering this independently.
The museum is pretty vast and can be unexpectedly tiring. Therefore, it might be a good idea to plan your time accordingly and prioritise certain galleries. We asked our guide how long she thought a visitor really needed to fully explore the museum and she answered without hesitation: “Three days!”
At present, there is no shop or cafe.
Note: If you are a professional scholar or an archaeologist, you may be able to apply for permission to enter the museum for free but you will have to follow a paper trail to do so. In our experience, unless you’re well-connected or have prepared for this in advance, it’s probably more straightforward to just pay the entrance fee.
