Fourteen Years After Gaddafi’s Fall, Libya Reopens Its National Museum to Much Fanfare

Among the museum’s artifacts, which were hidden during the long closure, are a 5,400-year-old mummy and remnants from the Roman Empire’s North African cities

Christian Thorsberg

– Correspondent

December 18, 2025 4:10 p.m.

In a ceremony marked by fireworks, acrobats, dancers and a full-size orchestra, large crowds and Libya’s top officials came together last week to celebrate the reopening of the country’s massive National Museum, which had sat closed on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea for more than 14 years. 

Beyond just a celebration of the arts, leaders have heralded the re-emergence of the country’s largest museum as a new chapter in the history of Libya.

Diplomats and celebrities watched the spectacle from Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square, once called Green Square, which more than a decade before had been filled with protestors and militias as the country’s Arab Spring movement took hold. The institution shuttered in 2011, the same year that former dictator Muammar Gaddafi was deposed and killed. Some of the museum’s final patrons were armed men who incorrectly believed a secret tunnel was accessible inside and vandalized a turquoise Volkswagen Beetle belonging to the fallen leader. 

“The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions,” Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbiebah said in an address at the ceremony, before wielding a stick and officially opening the museum’s doors.

Formerly known as As-Saraya Al-Hamra, or the Red Castle, the building’s nearly 110,000 square feet of gallery space will house artifacts spanning 5,000 years of North African history. Mosaics, coins, sculptures, rock art and murals from Libya’s prehistory—including Roman, Greek and Islamic periods—are poised to be on display. 

Friezes and statues from Leptis Magna and Sabratha, UNESCO World Heritage Sites and some of the best-preserved cities from the Roman Empire’s expansion into what is now Libya, will be on view. 

During the uprising, many artifacts were smuggled into hideaways to shield them from robbers. Roughly 21 items have since been returned to Libya since the fall of Gaddafi, Reuter’s Ahmed Elumami reports, including nine artifacts from the United States. The repatriation of roughly two dozen items from Spain and more from Austria is being negotiated. 

“This is a museum about the whole of Libya … the archaeological masterpieces of the whole country,” Mustafa Turjman, the museum’s former head of antiquities who was involved in the hiding of the museum’s goods, told The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour. “It is a force for unification.”

Museum visitors will be able to view ancient human remains excavated from the archaeological sites of Uan Muhuggiag and Jaghbub. Few artifacts are as precious as the 5,400-year-old mummified toddler, which was discovered in the sands of Tashwinat Valley, in southwestern Libya, in 1959.

Since at least 1999, the mummy has sat in the National Museum where experts have attributed improper storage, frequent power outages and a lack of trained preservationists to its bones’ decay. A movement to save the ancient infant and send it to Rome for restoration and analysis has gained momentum over the past year, Amr Fathallah reported for Smithsonian in September. 

“We must do everything in our power to recover what remains, if not for scientific value, then simply out of human decency,” Ramadan al-Shaibani, a Libyan antiquities expert, told Fathallah. “After all, this was a child, a human being, not just an archaeological artifact.”

Long delays are built into the museum’s history—though it was founded in 1919, the museum opened to the public for the first time in 1988. Currently accessible only to school groups, the museum is expected to fully open to the public in 2026 after a series of setbacks following its 2023 renovation.