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I saw that Municipality is now developing the Safat Square to include a a beautiful musical fountain that will organize daily public shows with cost of 4.5 Million Dinar, brilliant idea!

Safat Square is one of the most popular land marks in Kuwait, its located in the heart of Kuwait City and it represents a point where all old Kuwait areas (Qibla, Mirqab, Salhiya, Watya, and Sharq) meet.

It was a square where old tramps used to rest at, also it was a Souk (Marketplace) and an official place for making various festivals plus Police used it for public executions.

As for the name, Safat means a big wide and smooth rock in Arabic, maybe it was called Safat due to a geographical cause though I’m not sure.

I found this picture below for Safat Square back in 1950′s.

 Also this is very old photo for Safat Square with tramps and camels.

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Today while organizing my antiques I found that I still got games on floppy disks stored from the early 90′s, I’m sure you are all familiar with them. I had over 1000′s of them, can you imagine that a single DVD has more storage capacity than all those floppy disks.

So who wants to play street fighter?

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أحب كثيرا الاماكن السياحية التاريخية والتراثية في الكويت لأنها تمثل نافذة للماضي, ومن ابرز هذه الاماكن بالطبع المركز الامريكاني الثقافي الذي سيتم افتتاحه في يناير 2012 في منطقة قبلة.ا

 ما افرحني هو الجهد الكبير لدار الآثار الاسلامية بتجديد مبنى المستشفى الامريكاني وترميمه وتحويله الى مركز ثقافي عالمي وتاريخي واعطائه اسم المركز الامريكاني الثقافي.ا

يتكون المركز من مسرح كبير ورائع يروي قصة المركز (عرض بالفيديوا والصوت) ويستضيف العديد من الفنانين بالاضافة الى مساحات وقاعات للمعارض والانشطة المختلفة ومخزن لحفظ الاثار الثمينة, كذلك ورشة للانشطة ومكتبة تحتوي على العديد من الكتب التاريخية.ا

  سينضم المركز الامريكاني الثقافي العديد من الانشطة والفعاليات الرائعة التى من اهمها معرض “ذخيرة الدنيا” الشهير والذي يضم العديد من اروع واغلى المجوهرات والكنوز في العالم والتابعة لحضارة “مغل” الهندية الاسطورية.ا

  اقيم معرض ذخيرة الدنيا في العديد من البلدين حول العالم منذ سنة 2001 من ضمنها اوروبا والولايات المتحدة وآسيا والان في الكويت.ا 

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 خلال تواجدي في مجمع 360 لاحظت وجود معرض بمناسبة الاحتفالية ال49 بصدور الدستور الكويتي في وسط المجمع بالقرب من الكافيهات.ا

المعرض من تنظيم الامانة العامة لمجلس الامة بالتعاون مع النادي العلمي الكويتي ويستمر ليومين. كانت هناك العديد من الصور الرائعة لمبنى مجلس الامة والتي التقطها فريق متخصص من النادي العلمي.ا

وكانت هناك ايضا صور نادرة لامراء الكويت ولشخصيات كويتية سياسية, بالاضافة لمجموعة رائعة من الكتب التاريخية والتعليمية لمجلس الامة والمسيرة الدمقراطية في الكويت.ا

فعلا المعرض رائع وزيارته ضرورية لكل مواطن, وكل الشكر للمنظمين على الهدايا والشرح الوافي.ا

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I see that they organized an event named Al Seif Heritage Festival inside the Green Island.

I thought Green Island had became an abandoned place, I’m glad they finally decided to make an event to bring it back to life.

A short hike at the Green Island took me 24 years ago when we used to enjoy our weekends there, I recall they first launched it back in mid 80′s.

As for the festival, they displayed traditional stuff to help preserve Kuwaiti heritage plus there were shows, fireworks, and competitions.

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While passing Kuwait city this morning, I saw they are restoring a number of old Kuwaiti monuments and classic buildings such the old museum (see above).

Its good to see that the demolish-and-build-new strategy is finally changing in Kuwait city, these old buildings are precious to our identity and represent our gate to past.

Sadly, the restoration did not cover all old buildings, below is old the Amiri Hospital in really bad condition.

Also here we can see the famous Bayan Palace deserted since many years ago and if restored properly I believe it will be a great touristic spot.

As a civil engineer, I always say old buildings and new modern structures can co-exist to give even more appealing view for Kuwait city.

Amiri image via [Q8Rain]

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I received photos and video for Kuwait Diving Team exploring the Red Sea’s greatest ship wreck “Thistlegorm” that once was a massive British armed Navy ship built in 1940 and sunk during World War II due to a missile from German airforce.

The Thistlegorm is now a common diving site at Red Sea, but its scary seeing those rusty bombs, grenades, and machine guns laying deep in the water.

 We at BananaQ8 would like to thank Kuwait Diving team for sharing their thrilling adventure  with us.

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Our blog friend Rahul was able to get a nice aerial view shot for Kuwait city, see how the sky scrappers are rising in the center of Kuwait city with Al Hamra tower standing as the tallest.

I searched online for an old aerial view for Kuwait to distinguish among the past and present with regards to architecture.

Above is a view of Kuwait city before the age of oil,  buildings were built by mud and had high walls to reduce the heat.

The photo below was taken in 1961 at Fahad Al Salem street, and shows the old mud houses against new concrete buildings, which some of them are still standing.

Thanks [Eng. Rahul George]

3rd image via [Old Vs. New]

Click pictures below for full resolution:

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