Four-year effort reclaims Mosul’s heritage from ISIS ruin
Shafaq News- Mosul
The Mosul Cultural Museum marked International Museum Day on Monday by unveiling restored artifacts, years after ISIS devastated major cultural landmarks across the city.
Ahmed Al-Mukhtar, the museum’s director, told Shafaq News that the event featured video presentations documenting preservation and restoration efforts alongside updates on the museum’s rehabilitation project. He noted that the process lasted four years and brought together specialists from the Musée du Louvre and staff from the Mosul Museum, with funding provided by the ALIPH Foundation under the supervision of the World Monuments Fund.
The museum, the second largest in the country after the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, closed in 2003 during the Iraq war and sustained extensive damage after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014. In May 2023, Iraq’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage decided to rehabilitate it.
Since 2018, Iraqi and international institutions have worked to restore the site and rehabilitate its collections through structural repairs, preservation work, and redesign plans aimed at reopening the museum as a cultural and educational center.
