The Nubian Museum was founded in response to the international salvage campaign of the ancient Nubian monuments initiated by UNESCO upon the request of the Egyptian government in 1960. Work on establishing the Nubian Museum began in the early 1980s when a committee was formed comprising of specialists from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egyptian universities, and UNESCO.
The task of designing the building was entrusted to the architect Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hakim, and the museum’s interior was designed by the Mexican engineer Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, whose job it was to exhibit the archaeological, historical, cultural, and environmental heritage of Nubia. The Nubian Museum was opened in 1997, with its distinctive architectural design clad in local sandstone and pink granite, reflecting traditional local Nubian architecture. In 2001 it was awarded the Agha Khan Award for Islamic Architecture.
The museum has three floors, exhibiting thousands of artefacts that shed light on the development of Egyptian and Nubian geographical, social, and cultural civilization. The main exhibition hall and diorama present the local traditions and handicrafts of Nubia. In addition to the exhibition galleries, the museum also holds a lecture hall, library, educational department, theatre, and an open amphitheatre for the presentation of Nubian folklore.
The garden attached to the museum serves as an open-air museum that includes a part of a Fatimid cemetery, a cave with prehistoric rock inscriptions, and a waterway symbolising the artery of ancient Egyptian civilization, the River Nile. A series of water channels demonstrates the relationship between the river and the Nubian village surrounded by plants that would have been common in ancient times. A reconstruction of a Nubian house offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Egyptians in Nubia.
References:The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.
The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.
The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.