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About
The museum preserves and presents the domestic life and crafts of the Siwan people in a traditional oasis house.
The Siwa House Museum is housed in a traditional Siwan house built of kershef (a mixture of salt and mud) and palm wood, near the Shali fortress in Siwa town. Initiated with the encouragement of a Canadian diplomat concerned that Siwan culture and architecture would vanish, it displays objects of daily life in the oasis — silver jewellery, wedding costumes and embroidery, musical instruments, baskets, ceramics and agricultural tools — arranged in rooms that reflect their function in the household, together with documentation on the history of Siwa.
Why this museum matters
Exhibo editorial
A few minutes' walk from the Shali fortress, a two-storey house built the old Siwan way, of kershef — salt and mud — and palm wood. It exists because a Canadian diplomat feared that Siwan culture and its mud-brick houses would one day disappear, and pushed for a place to keep them. Inside, room by room, the everyday life of an oasis with its own Amazigh language: embroidered wedding dresses, heavy silver jewellery, musical instruments, baskets, pottery, tools for the palm groves. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. But it is the only place in Siwa where you can see the inside of the houses you have been walking past.
Visit
Hours, tickets, and directions for Siwa House Museum.
Address
Marsa Matruh Road, near Shali Fortress, Siwa, Matrouh Governorate, Egypt
Opening hours
Usually opens from about 09:30; hours vary — check locally.