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Nearly 10 years later, with a three-year delay and an estimated $ 434 million, the vast Qatar National Museum, built in the shape of a desert rose, opens this week.
A glittering ceremony, which should include the Qatari leader, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, took place on Wednesday, with the doors open to the public on the next day.
"Architecture should give voice to heritage while celebrating the future," tweeted the famous French architect Jean Nouvel of the museum, also responsible for the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The pale, futuristic 52,000-square-meter structure on the Doha Waterfront Corniche will be the first remarkable building that Qatar's visitors will see from the airport to the city center.
Even in a country under construction, rebuilding and transforming for the 2022 World Cup, the National Museum could be the most fascinating design of any new Qatar building.
The entrance includes 114 fountain sculptures in a 900-meter-long lagoon and the museum's multi-curved roof, which looks like a giant puzzle, is made up of 76,000 panels of 3,600 shapes and sizes.
Inside, there is more than 1,500 meters of gallery space.
Among the exhibits, a nineteenth century carpet embroidered with 1.5 million pearls of the Gulf and the oldest quran ever discovered in Qatar, also dating from the nineteenth century.
The National Museum is located on the waterfront of Doha (AFP)
"It's a museum that tells the story of the Qatari people," said Sheikha Amna Abdulaziz bin Jbadim al-Thani, director of the museum.
The National Museum of Qatar is also located on the site of the former palace of Sheikh Abdullah Bin Jbadim al-Thani, son of the founder of modern Qatar. The palace has been restored as part of the mbadive project.
The museum, which celebrates Qatar's Bedouin past and its energy-rich present, also reflects the country's immense wealth and ambition.
"Post-blockade identity"
And in addition to an architectural and cultural statement, the new museum is also political by the Qataris.
It is part of a growing list of spectacular buildings in Qatar, including the recently opened National Library and Museum of Islamic Art, further down the Corniche.
The National Museum is also the latest in the cultural race for arms and influence among the Gulf countries, including the Louvre de Nouvel in Abu Dhabi, which opened with great fanfare in 2017, designed to showcase progressive aspects of the different competing emirates.
And for Qatar, the late opening of the museum – originally scheduled for 2016 – has given it an opportunity to strengthen its national identity with other Gulf states, "experts said.
Since June 2017, former neighboring allies, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have carried out Qatar's diplomatic and economic blockade, including accusing them of supporting terrorism.
Qatar rejects all accusations and says the blockade is an attack on its sovereignty.
Sigurd Neubauer, an badyst for the Middle East based in Washington, said the new museum would help Qatar strengthen its separation from rivals.
"At the basic level, the museum represents the Qatari identity that has really accelerated in the post-blockade environment," he said.
At a time when the reputation of Doha's rivals appears "inward-looking and regressive", due to incidents such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Qatar's position is "at the opposite ", adds Neubauer.
"It's really not about construction, Qatar is trying to create an environment and a national identity that provides space for independent thinking.
"He doubles his own progressive reforms".
(With the exception of the title, this story has not been changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated thread.)
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