Af­ter many years of ex­pec­ta­tion and hope, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Mu­se­um is fi­nal­ly open.

Lo­cat­ed on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, the Car­ni­val Mu­se­um opened its doors yes­ter­day. The new mu­se­um hous­es arte­facts that show­case the ori­gins and jour­ney of Car­ni­val through the years that have giv­en the lo­cal fes­ti­val the “Great­est show on Earth” ti­tle.

Peo­ple can now go to the mu­se­um through­out the year and mar­vel at the var­i­ous artis­tic dis­plays and cre­ations that de­pict the rich colours of Car­ni­val.

Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell ex­plained that the birth­place of Car­ni­val in Trinidad and To­ba­go is east Port-of-Spain and it should be the epi­cen­tre.

“We have the Car­ni­val Mu­se­um in east Port-of-Spain, very soon we will have a state-of-the-art Des­per­a­does Pan The­atre and we al­so have the Pica­dil­ly Greens,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell al­so re­vealed plans are al­so in train to utilise vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy to bet­ter show­case Car­ni­val’s his­to­ry and lega­cy.

“To cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go, come here, there are in­cen­tives for spon­sor­ship in the cul­tur­al sec­tor, take ad­van­tage of those. This promis­es to be a tru­ly re­mark­able project,” he added.

This mu­se­um is the brain­child of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA), which was seek­ing to cre­ate a per­ma­nent space to tell the sto­ries of Car­ni­val. The First Cit­i­zens Foun­da­tion sub­se­quent­ly gave the TTC­BA the Char­lotte Street branch site, more com­mon­ly known as the “Pen­ny Bank,” for the ven­ture.