Opened in late 2013 to mark 40 years of the UAE Central Bank, the Currency Museum occupies a section of the ground floor in Central Bank’s headquarters building. Containing a wide range of exhibits that date to long before the Union of the UAE, the museum has a variety of paper notes, gold and silver coins that include historic Indian rupees, as well as Saudi Arabian and Qatari riyals. This intriguing exhibition explains the history of currency in the region with fascinating insights into the introduction of the dirham in 1973 as the official national currency and the issuance of the first series of notes in 1976. The museum also includes a part of the Central Bank’s collections of currency notes, currency coins, commemorative coins, gifts and samples of issues of UAE currency notes and coins and currency of other countries, in addition to cash counting and sorting machines used by the Central Bank in the past.