Mosul Heritage Foundation

The Mosul Heritage Foundation (formerly Beit Al Rahim) is located on the banks of the Tigris River in the Al Shifa neighborhood, near Qara Saray Citadel on the right bank of Mosul, the first non-governmental folk heritage museum in the city, considered today one of the most prominent cultural landmarks reflecting the spirit of Mosul and its ancient popular identity.

The house belongs to Osama Al Rahim, a Mosul expatriate who built a home in the 1990s in the authentic Mosul style, containing all the details of Mosul architecture, arches, furnishings, an iwan, a cellar, old wooden windows, wall engravings, Mosul ornamentations, and Quranic verses carved in marble.

After the house suffered damage during the battles to liberate Mosul from ISIS, the Al Rahim family donated the house. It was then restored and transformed by the young Mosuli Ayoub Dhannoun into what it is today, a heritage project that narrates the city's heritage and preserves its memory.

The house comprises several integrated sections: a community museum containing many artifacts and collectibles donated by Mosuli families from various areas of Nineveh Governorate, household tools, traditional costumes, and antiques documenting the daily life of Mosul's people in the last century. It also contains a virtual museum, the first of its kind in Iraq, implemented with virtual reality technology in collaboration with the local company "Qaf Lab," to archive archaeological sites destroyed by ISIS. In addition, there is a community center for the Reviving the Spirit of Mosul initiative that UNESCO is working on, a room for heritage creative works, sculptures and artistic handicrafts embodying Al Hadba Minaret, the Mosuli house, and the riverfront, alongside a paintings gallery, a hall for workshops and seminars, a heritage café emulating the ancient Mosuli courtyard (housh), and a shop for handmade Iraqi products.

The Heritage House organizes diverse cultural events aimed at reviving Mosul heritage and raising awareness among children and youth who have not seen their city's heritage due to the war, organizing heritage site cleanup campaigns, visits for school and university students, and tourist tours, making it from the ruins of war a cultural space pulsing with life that attracts visitors from inside and outside Iraq.