Saudi Museum of Happiness makes debut to help bring much needed cheer

Cairo: Saudi Arabia’s first museum of happiness has been luring visitors since its opening earlier this month in Riyadh.

Hundreds of people have flocked to the site for a 45-minute experience through 10 rooms to enhance feelings of happiness and help visitors break free from life routines.

“Each room in the museum generates a different sensory and visual experience,” the museum manager Al Jawhra Abanami told Saudi television Al Arabiya. “We seek to enhance the happiness hormone of visitors through imaginary elements of colours, music and smells,” she added.

Nearly 360 persons visit the site on average daily and the figure surges to 400 at the weekend, according to the official.

“Ideas of the museum take you back to the world of childhood,” Munira Al Ouda, a visitor, told Saudi television. “They unleash the child within you,” she added.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has endeavoured to shed its conservative image and boost its entertainment industry as part of an ambitious plan to diversify its oil-reliant economy.