The National Museum

The National Museum was formally inaugurated in 1949 by Governor-General R.C. Rajagopalachari and initially housed in the Rashtrapati Bhavan with selected artifacts from various museums of India. In 1955, the foundation stone of the present majestic building on the corner of Janpath and Maulana Azad Road was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru and the museum was shifted here and opened to visitors in 1960. Now it is the largest museum in Delhi with around 2,00,000 exhibits of exquisite art both foreign and Indian, giving a detailed insight into Indian history and its cultural heritage. It is administered and financed by the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. 

The museum spread over three floors has several galleries with a vast collection of Pre-historic Archeology, anthropology, jewellery, paintings, decorative arts, manuscripts, Central Asian antiquities, arms and armour, textiles etc. in a chronological order.

The galleries in the ground floor display rare pieces from Paleolithic age to the Mughal period. The library and auditorium is on this floor. First floor contains a varied collection of Indian miniature paintings, manuscripts, Central Asian antiquities etc. Second floor displays weapons, costumes, wood carvings, musical instruments, coins of the historical periods etc. 

Archaeology section on the ground floor has a prestigious collection of Indian sculptural art of different reigns and periods. It has exhibits from Indus Valley Civilization, art of the Maurya, Sunga, Satavahana, Kushana, Gupta, Medieval, Buddhist and Tantra, Gupta Terracotta sculptures, Bronzes, Jewellery, stucco figures, gold, silver, bone and ivory images etc. dated from 3rd century B.C to 19th century A.D.

The Indus Valley Gallery  displays many antiquities excavated from Mohenjodaro and Harappa, like terracotta toys, images and pots, jewellery, seals, bronze and copper implements and sculpture. The most outstanding sculpture here is the lyrical bronze Dancing Girl. Maurya-Sunga-Satavahana Gallery display artifacts from 3rd century B.C to 2nd century A.D. It includes stone sculptures depicting Buddha's life and folk deities like Yaksha, Yakshi etc, terracottas, some excellent specimens of Buddhist stupa's and carvings from rock-cut caves. In the Kushana Gallery there are images of Buddhist, Hindu and Jaina deities in human form and exhibits three styles of art from Mathura, Gandhara and Ikshvaku. Classical age of Indian art from 4th to 6th Century A.D with icons of gods, fauna and flora is represented in the Gupta Gallery. The medieval galleries exhibits, representative examples of various art-styles which flourished side by side in different regions of the country under different powers between 7th and 13th century A.D. Several stone sculptures of the early medieval period and sculptures and temple art of the famous temples like the Sun temple of Konark and Khajuraho etc of the late medieval period are displayed. Bronze Gallery has some excellent bronze collections mainly religious in character from the periods of Sunga, Kushana, Ikshvaku, Gupta etc. The art of bronze casting reveals the high level technical know-how of the people in the field of metallurgy in ancient India. The bronzes were cast by the lost-wax process called Madhuchchhist-tavidhana in Sanskrit.