India Guide
Delhi
National Museum
Address: 11 Janpath, just south of Rajpath
Website: www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in
Price: Rs300; cameras Rs300
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
The National Museum provides a good overview of Indian culture and history. The entry fee includes a free audio tour, but you need to leave a passport, driving licence, credit card or Rs2000 (or US$40/£40/€40) as a deposit, and the exhibits it covers are rather random. At a trot, you can see the museum in a couple of hours, but to get the best out of your visit, set aside at least half a day.
The most important exhibits, on the ground floor, kick off in room 4 with the Harappan civilization. The Gandhara sculptures in room 6 betray a very obvious Greco-Roman influence. Room 9 has some very fine bronzes, most especially those of the Chola period (from south India in the ninth to the thirteenth century), and a fifteenth-century statue of Devi from Vijanaraya in south India, by the left-hand wall. Among the late medieval sculptures in room 10, is a fearsome, vampire-like, late Chola dvarapala (a guardian figure built to flank the doorway to a shrine), also from south India, and a couple of performing musicians from Mysore. Room 12 is devoted to the Mughals, and in particular their miniature paintings. Look out also for two paintings depicting a subject you wouldn't expect – the nativity of Jesus. It's worth popping upstairs to the textiles, and the musical instruments collection on the second floor is outstanding. The Central Asian antiquities collection includes a large number of paintings, documents, ceramics and textiles from Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) and the Silk Route, dating from between the third and twelfth centuries. On your way out, look for the massive twelve-tiered temple chariot from Tamil Nadu, an extremely impressive piece of woodwork in a glass shelter just by the southern entrance gate.