Homs Museum

The archaeological museum of Homs stands on the city’s main street, in a building from the French Mandate years. What it holds comes from across the governorate, from prehistory to the Ottoman period. Whether it is open to visitors changes from year to year, so rather than fix opening hours here, ask before you go.

Getting there

On Shukri al-Quwatli Street, in the city centre. The building is visible from the road, and the museum sign above the entrance is in Arabic and English.

What is there

The ground floor is given to stone: a marble statue twice life size, found at al-Rastan; mosaics, one of them showing the Orontes; an altar from a temple of the sun god. Upstairs are third millennium pottery and bronze vessels from the mounds around Lake Qattinah and from Tell Shairat. Glass, small figures of Venus and gold jewellery recovered from the underground tombs of Roman Emesa are here as well. In the Islamic case stand vessels incised with verses of the Quran.

When the building went up

In three stages. The ground floor was built in 1922, the first floor in 1949 and the second in 1963; the façade is the work of forty years rather than of one design.

What most people miss

Look for the finds from the royal tomb at Qatna. The tomb was found with its contents intact. Among them are gifts held to have come from the pharaoh of Egypt. Nothing else here shows so plainly who the plain of Homs was corresponding with in the Bronze Age.