“Cities destroyed by terrorism” exhibition kicks off in Riyadh

Prime Minister of Iraq Adil Abdul Mahdi, opened on Wednesday an exhibition titled “Cities destroyed by terrorism,” organized by the Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the Paris-based Arab World Institute at the National Museum in Riyadh.

Several ministers, senior government officials, as well as diplomats and intellectuals attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition, which will run through May 18 and will receive visitors daily from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The exhibition showcases the story of Arab cultural and archaeological sites that were destroyed or under the threat of destruction for various reasons, the most important of which is terrorism, in the context of a virtual journey by the visitors to these famous sites using virtual reality techniques, in order to raise awareness about the importance of preserving and protecting these sites from all potential threats.

The Ministry of Culture’s interest in hosting the exhibition in the Kingdom is based on its care of cultural and archaeological sites and its keenness on raising public awareness about the importance of preserving these sites.

The exhibition contains pictures, videos and tools belonging to famous sites in Mosul, Nineveh, Aleppo, and Palmyra, all of which have fallen victim to the forces of extremism and terrorism in recent years. Most of these sites have disappeared.

The exhibition is significant in the sense that all these can be collected before integrating them into one visual context that provides accurate technical simulation of these sites and re-embodies them so that visitors can watch them as if they are already existing.