The Dubai Street Museum is a government public-art initiative by Brand Dubai (the creative arm of the Government of Dubai Media Office) with Dubai Municipality, launched in November 2016. Its first phase transformed 2nd of December Street — formerly Al Diyafah Street — in the old quarter of Satwa into an open-air gallery of building-scale murals.
The street was chosen for its history: it is one of Dubai's oldest, and leads toward Dar Al Ittihad (Union House), where the UAE was declared on 2 December 1971. The first murals were unveiled to coincide with the country's 45th National Day on 2 December 2016. Working to the curated theme of 'The Past', sixteen mural and graffiti artists of different nationalities — including four Emiratis, alongside international names such as Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic, Tunisian street artist The Inkman and Chinese artist Hua Tunan — painted sixteen buildings along the street.
The imagery draws on the UAE's heritage and identity: a man rowing a traditional abra across the Creek, the falcon that is the national bird, pearl divers, and a portrait paying homage to the nation's founders, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, based on a famous photograph by Noor Ali Rashid. Conceived as the first phase of a five-year, citywide programme to turn Dubai's walls into an open-air museum, the project revitalised the historic street while giving young Emirati artists a platform alongside established international muralists.
Exhibo editorial
Satwa is one of the last stretches of old, low-rise Dubai, and the Street Museum plays to exactly that. Rather than drop art into a glossy new district, it went to a working street of barbershops and cafés — the one that leads to where the country was actually declared in 1971 — and painted its history straight onto the buildings people already lived and worked in.
The theme was simply 'The Past', and it shows: pearl divers, falcons, an old man in his abra, the founding sheikhs rendered from a famous photograph. Walk it rather than drive it — the murals reward the pace, and the street around them, unpolished and genuinely lived-in, is half the point. This was the pilot for a much larger citywide idea, but the first chapter is still the most rooted.
How to find it
The murals run along 2nd of December Street (formerly Al Diyafah Street) in Satwa, on the stretch heading from the coast toward Sheikh Zayed Road, near the border with Jumeirah. Park at either end of the street and walk it — the building-sized murals line both sides, and walking is the only way to take them in properly. The street leads toward Union House, where the UAE was declared in 1971.
Similar places
All places
Related stories
Why Doha Is Full of Roundabouts
An old circle at a crossroads, sharpened by British road engineering, became the way an Arabian city found its way and remembered itself — and it took the bulldozers to reveal it.
In a city where a landmark was more useful than an address, Doha's roundabouts became its navigation, its landscaping and its national image all at once. Now they're being torn out for signalled junctions — and the affection for them arrived, as one scholar put it, only posthumously.
CMPLX to Bring a New Creative Playground to Dubai's Al Quoz This Year
A seven-warehouse lifestyle hub combining food, wellness, retail and creative studios is set to open in Al Quoz Creative Zone by the end of 2026, adding a new anchor to the neighbourhood built around Alserkal Avenue.
CMPLX, a new warehouse-style lifestyle destination combining food, wellness, retail and creative studios, is set to open in Dubai's Al Quoz Creative Zone by the end of 2026 — adding a fresh anchor to a neighbourhood already defined by Alserkal Avenue's galleries and cultural spaces.
The Night Is Not for Humans: Umm Al Duwais and the Women of Emirati Folklore
A village half-buried in sand an hour from Dubai, a name that means "she of the little sickle," and what Emirati sources actually say.
The houses at Al Madam went up around 1980 and stood empty by the mid-1990s. People will tell you she lives there — not in the old stories, though. That attachment is recent, and it is the interesting part.
