| Summary: | This article is devoted to the unusual history of the creation of the National Museum of Damascus. Nowadays this is the largest repository of literary texts and artifacts of the ancient civilization of Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, so as the Art culture values of the Middle East from the Byzantine time and Arab Middle Ages to periods of Modern age and 20th – 21st centuries. The idea of founding in Syria the National Art & Culture History Museum has started up in the process of organizing the Arab Academy of Sciences in Damascus (1918); it was partly inspired by the reports of the 17th – early 20th centuries travelers on ruins and artifacts which met and found on their ways. The Museum was founded at 1919 and located, and all the Academy, in the medieval madrasah. As a result of the operose archaeological excavations of ancient and medieval sites all over the country, found by chance or pointed towards by written sources, started in the 1920s – 1930s, a small collection has grown into a huge foundation of exhibits from different epochs. During 1936-1950, 1963, 1974 and 2004 for Museum a special building had been built: with halls for expositions and exhibitions, premises for storing funds, a library, a lecture hall and a park.
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