A visit to the Dubai museum is a must on every Dubai itinerary. Housed within the beautifully restored Al Fahidi Fort, which was erected around 1787 to defend the city against invasion, the museum's diverse collection of exhibits offers a fascinating insight into the rich history and cultural heritage.
Renovated in 1971 for use as museum, its colourful life size dioramas vividly depict everyday life in the days before the discovery of oil. Galleries recreate scenes from the Creek, traditional Arab houses, mosques, the souk, date farms and desert and marine life. One of the more spectacular exhibits portrays pearl diving, including sets of pearl merchants’ weights, scales and shieves. Also on display are artifacts from several excavations in the emirate, recovered from graves that date back to the third millennium B.C.

The museum's realistic lifesize static displays provide an insight into the traditional occupants of Dubai. Those have included dhow building, fishing, pearl diving and trade. Indeed, the export of fine pearls was a major factor in Dubai's rise to prominence as a trading centre.

The Creek has always been the lifeline of Dubai, providing a safe harbour to mercantile and fishing vessels, as it does even today. Visitors to the museum can view a splendid diorama depicting the old charm and bustle of commercial life along the banks of this fabled waterway.


Souks have been often referred to as the real heart of Arabia, and nowhere is this more true than in Dubai. The city's famous souks have, since the late 19th century, attached merchants and traders from as far afield as India, Iran, the eastern coast of Africa and beyond. At the museum, you can experience all the atmosphere of a soul in the 1950s, as you stroll through a labyrinth of spice stores, pottery and carpentry workshops and rows of shops, including tailors, grocers, textile merchants and date-sellers.

Traditional Dubai houses are considered to be among the finest examples of Gulf architecture. The earliest houses were constructed with humble building materials, including the leaves and trunks of palm trees (areesh), rocks and earthen clay. As flourishing pearl trade brought greater prosperity in the latter half of the last century, however, these gave away to houses built of stone and adorned with magnificent wind towers, the world's earliest form of air conditioning.

The Desert is the traditional habitat of people throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The Bedouin, who were the earliest inhabitants of the region, once lived in strong tribal communities and roamed the blazing sands with their camels, in search of food, grazing and trade. Sheep and goad herders scratched a living on the arid mountainsides.

Cultivators tended date palms wherever the merest trace of water could be found. The camel, the ship of the desert, was then the primary mode of transportation and the Bedouin's main source of milk, meat and wool. For accommodation, these proud nomadic people erected tents made chiefly of wool and animal hide.

Clothing was simple and utilitarian, consisting of a flowing garment and a headscarf that offered protection against harsh desert sun and fine grains of blowing sand. Jewellery, consisting mostly of bead necklaces and silver ornaments, was favoured by the Bedouin woman, while the male costume was used both as a weapon and a traditional fashion accessory.

Dubai Museum features a section devoted to the Bedouin lifestyle. This offers an interesting insight into the habitat, life and customs of the desert people.

Life in Dubai has been inextricably linked with the sea. The aridity of the desert compelled early settlers to seek alternative occupations and fishing rapidly developed as an important economic activity. The birth of a fishing industry soon led to the development of boat building, net-making and pearl diving and Dubai's enterprising traders sailed the oceans in search of markets for their products.

Pearl divers risked life and limb to gather oysters from the sea bed, often diving for more than two minutes at a time, with little more than a nose-clip and a heavy stone to weight them down. Such was the renown of Dubai's pearls, that pearling continued to be the mainstay of the city's prosperity, until the development of the cultured pearl in the 1940s led to the collapse in demand for the natural variety.

Examples of early dhows and boats can be seen in the courtyard of Al Fahidi Fort, while inside the museum visitors will be enchanted by an impressive diorama of pearl divers at work, along with the tools of their trade.