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Baituna at Talhami
Located in the heart of the Bethlehem old city, on Star Street, the street that the patriarchs still use to enter Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and other special religious occasions, "Baituna at Talhami" or "The Old Bethlehem Home" is one of the most famous cultural heritage museums in Palestine. Established by the Arab Women's Union in Bethlehem in 1971, the museum started modestly with a collection of traditional Palestinian household items displayed in an old house dedicated to the project where a living room and a kitchen were reconstructed. The museum was accompanied by a campaign amongst the Bethlehem families to donate their traditional belongings to the museum, and many items were thus saved from withering away in the backyards. In 1983, with the assistance of the French Consul General at the time, Mr. Jean Gueguinou, Mrs. Anne Saurat, a curator working at the time at restoring the Islamic museum in Al Aqsa Mosque, was asked to assist in classifying and organizing the collection. She also published a booklet about the objects and the photographs in the museum. In 1984, the museum was extended to an adjacent old house which had been restored. This new house, according to the president of the Arab Women's Union, Mrs. Julia Dabdoub, "is one of the few authentic old houses left in Bethlehem… similar to the house in which Jesus was born." She herself had in 1992 donated her forty year collection of photographs, furniture, and works of art to furnish the upper room or "Al Illiya" which shows the life of Bethlehem residents between 1900 - 1932.
The sections of the museum include: Traditional dresses and jewelry, dwelling rooms starting with the Diwan (sitting room), the kitchen, the bedroom, in addition to the ground floor "Al Rawya" where sheep and goats were kept. Adjacent to the museum is the Arab Women's Union embroidery center which displays traditional Palestinian embroidery items for sale.