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. The event also included a concert by the Silkroad Ensemble, an orchestral group that performed pieces inspired by the varied soundscapes of the Red Sea.
The rehabilitation of Bab Al-Bunt and its repurposing as a museum comes as part of the regeneration of Historic Jeddah, a Unesco World Heritage site. However, there were several technical challenges involved with its restoration.
“The mission to transform a historical building to a museum wasn't easy,” says Eman Zidan, the museum’s director. “With its coral stones and wooden beams, the building is a story of its own. We restored using the original materials and we adhered to the original building techniques.”
The aim was to create “a dialogue between the architecture of the building and the scenography,” Zidan says. Jeddah and Bab Al-Bunt are the focal point of the museum’s narrative, but it also shows how the Red Sea served as a cultural bridge between various nations and civilisations.
The rebuilding was led by French architect Francois Chatillon, who says there were quiet a few technical considerations that had to be taken during the restoration process.
“This building was a little bit complicated to understand because we had some photos, but not a lot of archives,” he says. “It’s not exactly Hijazi architecture. It’s not exactly like the rest of the buildings in Al Balad, even if it’s made of coral stones.”
The aim was to stay true to the structure’s architectural character while equipping it with modern necessities such as air conditioning. Choosing to leave the wooden ceilings exposed meant finding alternative routes for electrical wiring and piping, often burrowing alongside the building and then running lines perpendicularly toward its foundations. It was, Chatillon says, a technically arduous task.
“Restoration is an act of creation and interpretation,” he says. “It’s not bringing back the past. The goal is to give some signs into what happened here, to invite you to understand the location.”
And the museum communicates the significance of its venue and broader geography through a diversity of mediums and vantage points. The ground floor animates Jeddah’s past through archival materials, from images by European photographers that show Jeddah in the early 20th century to footage that offers a glimpse into what Bab Al-Bunt looked like in its early years. A highlight that’s impossible to miss is a massive wrought iron anchor displayed in the center of the ground floor. Weighing about 400kg and dating back to the 18th century, it was found just off Jeddah’s shores as fragments and was carefully put together for the museum.
Interactive screens and multimedia elements help animate the different facets of the area’s past, but it is the contemporary works that, most interestingly, show novel takes on this history, while exploring its ongoing influences. Several of these were commissioned by the Ministry of Culture specifically for the museum.
Saudi artist Manal Al Dowayan’s We Are Coral, for instance, features glass pieces formed as corals suspended from the ceiling through ropes, referencing simultaneously the beauty and fragility of marine life. The installation is displayed beside a collection of prayer beads crafted from a rare black coral from the Red Sea. Mythical Creatures Diorama by Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, meanwhile, draws from the legends of the sea with a mesmerising display depicting mermaids and other fantastical lifeforms.
Other works allude to marine life from the Red Sea, but from a different side of the coast. Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert’s Souvenir Shop - Red Sea, Egypt is an archival print showing CRT televisions as aquariums, filled with shells and fish sculptures. Sudanese artist Mohammad Omer Khalil presents a pair of collage works that contrast the divergent fates of two cities on the Red Sea: Jeddah and Suakin. Whereas the former evokes a sense of order and vibrancy, the canvas dedicated to Suakin is more poignant.
“When the British came in the late 19th century, they said the coral reefs made it hard to navigate larger ships, so they moved the port to Port Sudan, the current port,” Khalil says. “Everybody moved with the port. Suakin was abandoned.”
Every object and artwork within the museum uncovers an interesting pocket of history. Upstairs, a collection of century Chinese porcelain cups gestures towards the Umluj shipwreck, discovered in 2007 off the Saudi coast. A photograph of Mutawwif Hassan Banna alludes to the inherited Mutawwif practice, as part of which qualified instructors guide pilgrims throughout the holy journey. Old maps show caravan routes between Africa and Jeddah.
Of course, all these are complimented by contemporary artworks, including a piece from Ahmed Mater’s Magnetism series, among others.
The museum also has a dedicated space for temporary exhibitions, right under Bab Al-Bunt’s double-curved arches that served as a gateway to the city. Appropriately, the inaugural exhibition, The Gate of Gates, investigates the state of Bab Al-Bunt prior to the ministry’s restoration process. It features a large selection of photographs by Moath Alofi, who was invited to document the site weeks before the restoration began. Over the span of a few days, the Saudi photographer and his team visited the site, mindful of not interfering with what was left behind throughout the years.
“The place led me. The things led me,” he says. “Wherever I lay my eye on something surprising, enigmatic or something that made me wonder. I always focused on that.”
While there are plenty of architecture photographs that depict the building’s arches, its engravings and old stained glass – depictions that often veer towards the abstract – there are also several that allude to human presence and the trail left behind by those who either inhabited the space or used it as storage. Fly swatters and hangers are hung from nails. Ladders lean against window ledges. There are fabrics swaddling unknown objects, stacks of paintings, coffee spilled on the wall in a trail alluding to a swan. The building for more than two decades had no clear, official use, but it is evident that the local community still found ways to make use of the structure.
Nevertheless, Bab Al-Bunt’s rebirth as a museum is significant for Jeddah’s community and the wider Saudi Arabia, particularly for the way it explores the history of the Red Sea and the people who moved across it.
“Our leadership saw the value of such a heritage place, they elevated this and kept it for everyone,” Alofi says. “We are talking tourists, researchers, we are artists. We are talking the local economy as well. I’m happy to see it thriving.”
