National Museum
Five thousand years of the subcontinent in one building, begun the year after independence.
The collection came together before the building did. An exhibition of Indian art sent to London in 1947 came home to be shown in Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1949, and rather than disperse it the new republic decided to keep it. Nehru laid the foundation stone on Janpath in 1955; the museum opened into its own galleries in 1960, at the junction of Lutyens's ceremonial axis and the road south.
What is inside runs from Harappan seals to Chola bronzes to Mughal miniatures to Tanjore glass, some two hundred thousand objects across five millennia. It is arranged more or less chronologically around a circular court, which means you can walk from the Indus Valley to the eighteenth century in an afternoon and feel the ground shift under you several times.
- 01The Dancing GirlA bronze figure barely eleven centimetres tall, cast at Mohenjo-daro around four and a half thousand years ago.
- 02The Piprahwa relicsBone relics attributed to the Buddha, kept in a dedicated gallery and venerated as much as viewed.
- 03The miniature galleriesMughal, Rajput and Pahari painting hung close enough to read the brushwork.
Closed Mondays. The audio guide is worth taking; the labelling is thin in places and the building does not explain itself.