Exhibo
Search
Damascus

Umayyad Square & Al-Hejaz

2 galleries · 5 museums · 0 places

About this district

Exhibo editorial

The modern civic and cultural core of Damascus, running from the great roundabout of Umayyad Square down toward the historic Hejaz railway station. This is the district of the big national institutions — the National Museum of Damascus, the Opera House, the university, the Tekkiye — rather than of small galleries. It holds the country's principal archaeological museum and its main cultural landmarks. The register is institutional and civic, at national scale.

Galleries

Museums

Dar Al-Assad for Culture and Arts — museum cover

Dar Al-Assad for Culture and Arts

Public institution
French Cultural Center in Damascus — museum cover

French Cultural Center in Damascus

Public institution
National Center for Visual Arts (NCVA) — museum cover

National Center for Visual Arts (NCVA)

Public institution
National Museum of Damascus — museum cover

National Museum of Damascus

Public institution
Syria Prisons Museum — museum cover

Syria Prisons Museum

Public institution

Places

No published places in this district yet.

Stories

All articles
A shallow engraved brass bowl seen from above, its inside surface covered edge to edge with inscription and geometric figures.
Editorial

Cairo · Egypt

The Seal of Solomon: The Object That Grew Around One Word

The Qur'an never mentions a ring. What grew in that gap instead: a demon, a seal, seven signs nobody can trace, a thousand years of amulets, and a star that ended up on a flag.

A fisherman pulls up a copper jar stopped with lead, and the mark of a signet ring is pressed into the lead. Everyone hearing this in ninth-century Baghdad knew what came next — they knew it from the lid. The strange part is that the ring they all knew about is not in the Qur'an.