The Kurdish Textile Museum sits inside the Erbil Citadel in a restored traditional house and displays a collection of textiles, carpets, kilims, and traditional clothing from across the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. It is one of the better small museums in Iraqi Kurdistan — clearly curated, well-labelled in English, and genuinely informative about the regional variations in Kurdish weaving traditions.
The collection explains how tribal and regional identity is encoded in carpet patterns and garment styles — a visual language that is still legible to older Kurds but increasingly lost to younger generations. The museum is the main reason to enter the citadel complex, and is worth the short walk up from the main gate. Allow 45 minutes.