Rehabilitating the Raqqa Museum and its collection

The Raqqa Museum housed an important collection of cultural and archaeological objects from Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods. The Daesh occupation of the region between 2014 and 2017 scarred this institution profoundly: its extensive collection of some 8,000 artifacts was severely looted, with only 800 pieces remaining from its original collection. A project to rehabilitate the museum building was launched in 2019, led by La Guilde Européenne du Raid and the local NGO Roya in cooperation with the city authorities. It emphasized the use of local materials, such as bricks fired in a traditional kiln located on the outskirts of the town. The second project then focused on documenting and inventorying the artifacts that survived the conflict, followed by preventive conservation to ensure adequate conditions for their storage. The work to rehabilitate the Raqqa Museum and its collection was complemented by a project by Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin. Its aim was to reconstruct the inventory of the looted collection by compiling information from the museum and data from the archaeological excavations in the German and Dutch archives. These three projects, supported by ALIPH, helped to revive the museum, which reopened its doors in November 2023. The inaugural exhibition "Witnesses of the Past and Present"—viewed by the public and many local schoolchildren—presented 50 of those artifacts. This rehabilitation of the Raqqa Museum and its collection is a symbol of resilience and the reappropriation of memory.