Tripoli's Red Castle museum has reopened for the first time since the 2011 uprising that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, unveiling a trove of treasures that span millennia, from ancient mummies to relics of Libya's turbulent and fascinating history.
Formerly known as As-Saraya Al-Hamra, the fortress that houses the museum has long been a central landmark in Libya’s capital, Tripoli. It houses an extensive collection of artifacts tracing 5,000 years of history, from prehistoric times through to Libya’s Roman, Greek and Islamic eras.
Collections include Islamic art and architecture as well as objects from Italian colonial rule, World War II and Libya's independence, with galleries dedicated to the prehistoric period and ancient Libyan tribes, such as the Garamantes.
“The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions,” Abdulhamid al-Dbiebah, prime minister of the Government of National Unity, said at a ceremony on Friday awash with fireworks at the site.
The museum closed in February 2011 during the NATO-backed uprising against Gadhafi, as anti-government protesters in the northeastern city of Benghazi began calling for the leader to step down and for the release of political prisoners. As protests intensified, demonstrators took control of Benghazi and unrest spread to Tripoli, with the Libyan government using lethal force against demonstrators.
When rebels launched their first attack on the Libyan capital in August that year, a group of armed men were reported to have entered the national museum, incorrectly believing it to conceal the entrance of a secret government tunnel. The museum’s artifacts were largely left intact, though a 1960s Volkswagen Beetle belonging to Gadhafi was among the regime-linked objects vandalized.
Gadhafi was eventually toppled with the help of an international coalition that included the U.S.
Renovations for the museum, built in the 1980s and opened by Gadhafi, began in March 2023 by the Tripoli-based GNU.
The reopening of the national museum indicates a recovery in the country’s cultural sector, despite unresolved political dynamics. The country remains divided between administrations in the west and east that have not had a unified budget in more than a decade.
But with a planned election on the horizon in 2026, Hager Ali, a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, said the museum's opening carries a political message.
The reopening is "kind of like a proof of concept of the western government that they are stable, especially in the forerun of elections," she told NBC News on Saturday, referring to the GNU.
"There really isn’t anything that isn’t political right now in Libya," she added. “This is very much a kind of a symbol that everyone can get behind."
Since renovations began, Libya has recovered 21 artifacts that were smuggled out of the country after Gadhafi’s fall, notably from France, Switzerland and the United States, the chairman of the board of directors of the antiquities department, Mohamed Farj Shakshoki, told Reuters ahead of the opening.
Libya houses five UNESCO World Heritage sites, which in 2016 were all declared "endangered" due to instability and conflict.
The historic town of Ghadames in western Libya was among the sites under threat, but conservation work spearheaded by the Managing Libya's Cultural Heritage project led to the site being officially removed from UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger in July.
