Red Sea Museum in Jeddah revives the city's historic gateway

Jeddah’s seaport has been converted into a museum that explores its past significance while highlighting, through contemporary works, the cultural exchange that still defines the city.

For decades, the pointed double-curved arches of Bab Al-Bunt were the first thing many pilgrims saw as they approached Jeddah by sea. The colonnade must have been a profound sight. The structure signalled the final leg of the long journey to Makkah and Madinah; after days, or even weeks, of travelling – it meant the pilgrims had finally reached the threshold of the holy cities.

Built in 1866, Bab Al-Bunt was initially a small wooden structure before it was expanded to a grand concrete gateway in the 1930s. As Jeddah’s main port, it also functioned as a customs and medical screening centre. In a way, Bab Al-Bunt was a microcosm of Jeddah and its diversity, with different nationalities and backgrounds mingling within its halls and nooks before continuing inland.

That changed as the city changed. In the urbanisation of the mid to late 20th-century, a new maritime port was established, and Bab Al-Bunt became a municipality building before being eventually abandoned around 2004. Even the sea, once tiding right up to its arches, moved away due to the land reclamation that pushed the shoreline farther back.

Bab Al-Bunt has found a new place within Jeddah’s cultural landscape as the Red Sea Museum. A restoration initiative by the Ministry of Culture has thoughtfully preserved its architectural charm, reintegrating it into the daily public sphere as a museum that brings together 1,000 historical artefacts and contemporary works. In a sense, it is a reprisal of its old role as a gateway, but in a more symbolic sense.

The museum opened doors on Friday, in an event attended by Prince Badr bin Abdullah, Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Museums Commission.