Dar Jamaï National Museum of Music

## A historic Meknes palace devoted to music **Dar Jamaï National Museum of Music** occupies one of Meknes's most important historic residences. Built in **1882** for Mohamed Ben Larbi Jamaï, grand vizier to Sultan Moulay Hassan I, the palace combines Hispano-Moorish architecture with zellige, carved wood, plasterwork and an Andalusian garden. The building became a museum in **1920**. After a major restoration launched in 2019, it reopened in **March 2022** with a new national mission focused on Moroccan music. ## The diversity of Moroccan musical traditions The museum explores rural and urban traditions through instruments, repertoire, song, dance and social practice. Amazigh musical cultures, rhythmic rural traditions, the Andalusi heritage of urban music, and brotherhood traditions such as **Aïssaoua** and **Gnawa** all contribute to the story. More than one hundred instruments allow visitors to discover the major organological families: **aerophones, chordophones, membranophones and idiophones**. ## A sensory and architectural museum Sound and multimedia interpretation help visitors understand music not only as performance but as a form of memory, social life and regional identity. The palace is itself part of the visit, making Dar Jamaï simultaneously an architectural monument, a museum and a cultural memory site for the imperial city. ## Around El Hdim Square The museum stands on **El Hdim Square**, at the entrance to Meknes's historic medina. A wider cultural route can include the [Mohamed El Mennouni Cultural Centre](/en/institutions/centre-culturel-mennouni-meknes) and [Cinéma Caméra](/en/institutions/cinema-camera-meknes). Culturama can progressively connect confirmed exhibitions and activities at Dar Jamaï to this page, building an accessible archive of the museum's programming.