V is for... Vivid ... n ... Visit

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

V is for Van Gogh Museum

I'm revisiting one of my favourite museums today - the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It stands next to the Stedelijk and a little way across the Rijksmuseum in the Museum Square. The Van Gogh Museum is the definitive last word on the artist's life and art, it holds the largest collection of his paintings and drawings under one roof and also a collection of his letters. This one museum was the driving factor for my visit to Amsterdam in the late nineties. 

I was introduced to Vincent van Gogh by my father and had become a fan in my teens after reading his fictionalised biography. Those days my father subscribed to a pile of (print!) magazines, among them Nat Geo, so many of my early travel wishlists were shaped by their features. I'm not sure when and where I read about the museum, it has been around since 1973, but I do recall reading in an article in Nat Geo about Vincent's wanting to 'paint a lullaby in colours.' By the time hubby and I planned our trip in the late nineties, the Van Gogh Museum was firmly on the very top of the Amsterdam agenda. 

There are no photographs, because 1) photographing the artworks was a no no at the time and 2) the concept of the selfie didn't exist, so there were no selfie points as I understand there are now. However, pictures are  totally not needed as most of Vincent's artworks  and his  life are super famous, he remains  one of the most frequently reproduced artists of all time. Must see works at the Museum include:

• The Potato Eaters (1885)

• Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat (1887)

• The Bedroom (1888)

• The Yellow House (1888)

• Sunflowers (1889)

• Almond Blossoms (1890)

• Irises (1890)

• Wheatfield with Crows (1890)

• Tree Roots (1890)

Note that the Van Gogh Museum also has a significant body of art by artists other than Van Gogh, such as Claude Monet, Emile Bernard, Gauguin etc  - contemporaries/predecessors who influenced Vincent and provide the context to his art as well as the art movements of his time. 

The Van Gogh Museum attracted more than 1.8 million visitors in 2025 and is one of the top most visited single artist art museums. Note that most single artist museums have footfall numbers less than a million. The Museum also has formidable online presence with nearly 11 million followers on their various SM platforms and a reach of 170 million.  

Read more about the Van Gogh Museum and explore his artworks and life by clicking the link here.  Vincent's letters have been digitised also and are available online, click this link to read them.

V is also for Victoria & Albert Museum

The V&A as it's popularly known is also another favourite of mine and it describes itself as an institution that is dedicated to design and creativity in all its forms. The Museum showcases the 5000 year fascinating history of design, creativity and innovation in as diverse fields as photo-poetry to textiles, lacquer work to stained glass and from metal casting to print making and shoes.  

Print. Running Cola is Africa. Image credit : V&A

Apart from the main site at South Kensington, London, there are some 5 other satellite premises in other parts of London and in the UK, which together display a collection of 2.8 million objects from every possible creative discipline imaginable. It is one of the largest museums in the world and has a staggering 150+ galleries. Naturally one of the most visited in London, with 3.33 million visitors in 2025. 

The V&A in South Kensington. The Museum goes back to 1852, as the Museum
of Manufactures. At its core were the objects that were curated in the 'Great
Exhibition' of 1850.

I have visited this favourite multiple times, the last visit was in 2018. It is impossible to come up with any kind of must see shortlist of items for it, as the galleries are so diverse - one year we focussed on the Japanese arts specifically textiles and netsukes, another year we spent our entire visit being obsessed with an exhibition of ceramics, I remember yet another being entranced by their stained glass. It is altogether riveting for anyone interested in any aspect of design. 

The V&A holds one of the largest collection of Renaissance sculptures outside of Italy and iconic objects like the Tipu's Tiger, a decorative object shaped like a tiger attacking a European soldier with a built organ which mimics the dying cries of the man. The Museum also has the most exquisite jewellery pieces, some of which belong to Queen  Victoria, who laid the foundation stone of the Museum and gave it her and her consort's names in 1899.

Read more about the Museum and explore its collections by clicking the link over here.  

Finally V is for the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata's own monument to Queen Victoria, built during the British Raj which is now a small Museum and is one of the most popular attractions of the city. Nothing like the V&A, it has some 20 odd galleries and a collection of portraits, paintings and weaponry, a new one on Kolkata's history has been added in recent years.

Victoria Memorial, Kolkata.

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Thank you for visiting and reading. As the Challenge winds down into its last week now, I hope you've had a wonderful A-Z so far if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

U is for ... Unending ... n ... Uniform ...

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

U is for United States Air Force

The National Museum of the United States Air Force is located at the Wright Patterson Base near Dayton, Ohio and is the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world. This is quite apparent to any visitor as s/he goes through the unending spaces, gallery after gallery of images and actual figher planes of USAF's various aircraft from the start of aviation warfare itself. 

The museum has an exhibition space of more than 100,000 sq m and has over 300 exhibits, including various missiles, presidential planes and warplanes; and thousands of historical photographs, uniforms and other memorabilia. It is impressive and a little unnerving at the same time for a visitor like me who isn't super comfortable with violence. Military museums anywhere in the world are a bit gut wrenching.

Missile gallery. 

When I mentioned this to one of my American hosts, their immediate response was 'our history is warfare.' This is, of course true for the entire human history, but feels particularly relevant and poignant right now. 

Another one of the galleries.

The exhibits are housed in 10 main indoor galleries and two outdoor parks, including a memorial park. I visited the Museum in 2023 and spent a good half day there, but it can easily be an entire day visit. The annual footfall is around 1 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist attractions in Ohio.  Read more about the National Museum of the USAF on their exhaustive website by clicking the link here.

U is also for Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur, India

Umaid Bhavan Palace in Jodhpur is a 20th century palace complex and a private residence of one of the royal families of Rajasthan. It was conceived as a project to help the famine stricken local population by providing them with some livelihood. When it was built in the first part of the 20th century it was considered one of the largest royal residences. Nearly 350 rooms and a banquet hall that can accommodate 300 guests. It also has several courtyards, tennis and squash courts, a billiards room, private dining rooms, and many long corridors. The architecture is in a style called Indo-Deco and is also of interest to visitors.

Part of it was converted into a high end hotel and museum in the 70s, while the erstwhile royal family  continued to reside in the private apartments in the building. (India did away with kings at independence in 1947 and all royal privileges, privy purses and royal status were stripped from them in 1971.) The museum showcases  artefacts associated with the family and royal life. Including things like hunting trophies (another reminder of violence!), vintage cars and antique clocks. Also if I remember rightly some amount of weaponry = daggers and shields and such like. I visited early nineties and without a camera so there are no aide-memoires at all. Pleasant building, small collection is what I remember, relevant only if one is interested in Rajasthan's royal families and 20th century pre-independence royal lifestyles. 

Incidentally, it was also the venue for Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas' Indian wedding ceremony. Read more about the Umaid Bhavan Palace by clicking the link here. 

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Thank you for visiting and reading. As the Challenge winds down into its last week now, I hope you've had a wonderful A-Z so far if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

T is for... Trust ... n ... Talisman

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

T is for the Topkapi Palace Museum

Today I'm revisiting my time in Turkey or Turkiye as it is known now, specifically the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. That city has been the capital of three different empires - Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman, with a truly deep history and is among the top ten visited cities in the world. Over 20 million tourists visit the city annually and as we shall see, a chunk of them visit the Topkapi Palace. It is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985.

The Topkapi Palace (or Topkapi Sarayi in Turkish) was the seat of the court and the residence of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for roughly about four centuries, from its completion in 1478 to 1856, when the Imperial residence moved to Dolmabahce Palace. It was converted into a museum in 1924 by the government after the Ottoman Empire ended and Turkiye became a republic. 

There are two distinct aspects to the Museum - the buildings themselves and the historical artefacts, art, holy relics, objects and documents held in them. The Palace is humongous, covering an area of roughly 700,000 sq m. It has  three monumental gates, leading to successive areas of greater privacy and sacredness. Within the gates lie  four different courts, gardens dotted with several clusters of buildings, each cluster in its turn has its own historical, cultural and architectural significance.  Not getting into those details of Iznik tiles and carved marble, brick and limestone, muqarnas and domes in the 400 odd rooms that comprise the palace. Much of those are not open to the public.

Library. Topkapi Palace.

The Museum houses over 12,000 porcelain pieces, some of which were said to change colour if they came into contact with poisoned food, some 30,000+ manuscripts and over 300,000 archival documents  pertaining to the Ottoman administration, paintings/portraits and miniatures, garments such as talismanic shirts used by the royals or received as gifts, a huge collection of arms and armour - the most comprehensive one of Islamic weapons spanning 7th to 20th century. It holds gems, jewellery and valuables from the royal treasury - such as the Topkapi dagger and the Spoonmaker's Diamond - and the holiest of Islamic relics, held as a sacred trust, comprsing fragments of Prophet Muhammad's beard, tooth and robes, Moses's staff and David's sword. It is a vast and diverse range housed in a vast and diverse palace complex. One can spend hours and hours in the palace.

Detail of grille, Council House. Topkapi Palace.

I visited Topkapi Palace a long time ago in 2003, just days before the start of the Iraq war, which completely derailed our long term plans to visit the old civilisations of the ME - Iraq and subsequently Syria. Visitor numbers to Istanbul were around 3 million in the early 2000. Currently Topkapi alone draws 3 million tourists every year, while Istanbul has become a world tourism hub. Read more about the Topkapi Palace Museum by clicking the link here.

T is also for the Taj Mahal and the Tate Gallery, which is not a gallery but an art museum, but I've run totally out of time today, so I'm leaving you with these photos only.

Taj Mahal, the mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahal the beloved wife of Emperor
Shah Jahan, built in the 17th century and now a UNESCO World Heritage
site in Agra, India. Both emperor and his consort are interred in this well
known monument to love. Visited many times, this one from 2017

 

Father and son duo working on their art at the Tate Gallery. The Tate is an art
museum that holds  British and international art from the 16th to the present
century in 4 different museum sites. It holds a large number of masterpieces
by J.M.W. Turner. Visited 2-3 times, this one from 2018.

~~~

Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

S is for ... Small ... Significant ... n ...Six ...

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

S is for the Sixth Floor Museum

Museums tell stories and not all of them are about fantastic, feel-good stuff like painting and sculpture, or about the heady, forward sweep of civilisation. There are some stories that are super scary or baffling or both. And even the feel good ones - like the touring exhibition of Dutch masters I talked about earlier, have their darker side. The backstory of museums and their collections, the story of secular still life in art  - well, those stories are underpinned by colonialism and slavery, by violence and unimaginable hardships for colonised and marginalised populations. The Dutch, French and the British East India Companies were private corporations with vast trading networks and their own ruthless militias. Entire European economies were built and supported by colonialism from the 16th to the 20th century, for nearly 500 years. One must be aware of this aspect of museums also. 

So today I'm switching things up and going to the Sixth Floor Museum -  a tiny museum telling a dark story from the sixties - that of an assassination which changed the history of the USA and shocked people right round the world.

'JFK was here.' Commemorating the President and his last motorcade. 

The Sixth Floor Museum is located in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, at the crossroads of Elm Street and Houston Street, the exact spot from where President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on 22nd November, 1963.  I was there in winter 2023 on the 60th anniversary and there were banners marking out the route the Presidential motorcade took on the day.  Inside the museum, both the magic and the turbulence  of that era are highlighted through photos, press clippings, artefacts and videos. The key areas of the crime scene have been recreated.  A Mannlicher-Carcano rifle of the type that was used as the assassination weapon is one the exhibits. 

The main exhibit on the sixth floor: John F Kennedy and
 the Memory of a Nation.

There are over 90,000 exhibits including oral histories, images, artefacts, video and films, press clippings and narrations. All in all it is a compact bird's eye view of the few days that changed the course of history as well as an exposition of the life and legacy of JFK and the overall churn of the sixties. Thought provoking and a little gut wrenching at the same time. 

Images of the inauguration in 1961.

I was born the day after the funeral, obviously I have no memories of how my immediate family might have reacted to the news. My mother was a fan of Mrs Kennedy and JFK, they were the ultimate power couple of that era. Like many other stories, she was the first one to tell me this one too. It was sombre but somehow also satisfying to visit the museum and the JFK Memorial and to connect the two - the stuff I'd heard with the stuff I was seeing, albeit decades later. 

A sense of the issues.

The annual visitor numbers to the Sixth Floor Museum varies between 250,000 and 325,000. In 2023, the year I was there, the museum recorded 258,000 visitors. The Sixth Floor Museum has a detailed website which can be accessed by clicking here. Much of it is digitised and can be viewed virtually as well. 

S is also for St Fagan's National Museum of History

St Fagan's is an open air museum located in St Fagan's, Cardiff, Wales. Its exhibits consist of buildings from all over Wales, from the past centuries to post WWII, which have been dismantled and brought into the museum and reassembled exactly as they were at their original sites, showcasing Welsh lifestyle and architecture and their evolution over time. The oldest structure in the museum is dated to the 12th century, restored to its 16th century form - a Church still being used for worship at Christmas and Easter.  

The oldest structure I saw was a farmhouse dated 1470, restored to 18th century state. There is an Elizabethan castle located there, the grounds are basically where the reassembled buildings have been placed. The castle is being roofed and is closed at present due to the construction work. There are working mills - wool and flour, craftspeople plying there trades weaving, smithing etc. a toll gate, a pigsty, a row of workers cottages depicting the interiors from 1800 to 1980s. In all over 40 different buildings. 

The Kennington Farmhouse

The detailed label explaining the history of the building and its use.
The paint is red ochre, and it indicates that the famiiy was relatively
wealthy as they could afford colour, most people couldn't. 

All very interesting and quite a unique take on presenting history to the lay public, especially young people who are always the main targets of museums. There were docents in period appropriate costumes to answer any questions visitors might have.  

The oldest building I saw.

And its label. The record keeping is meticulous and superbly impressive.

One of the things that struck me as I moved in and out of the various houses is how dark (literally) and  hard life must have been for the common people who lived in them in the past centuries  - without electricity and running water, without a scrap of mechanisation. Especially for the women, but also for the men, tending to animals and keeping farms running 24/7 without a break.  Coping with serious diseases without antibiotics and vaccines. Makes one uber-glad and grateful for being born in the 20th century! The  so called 'good old days' were good only for a tiny sliver of the rich elite, for the hoi polloi it was a horror show of daily drudgery at best and an early death at worst.

The fire was real and kept going by staff. Beyond it, everything was darkened. 

St Fagan's recorded around 570,000 visitors in 2025, generally its visitors number more than half a million annually. It is Wales' top rated cultural attraction and one of the most popular in the UK. Read more about St Fagan's at their site by clicking the link here.

Another candidate for S is the Science City in Kolkata, a science museum  which I've been to innumerable times with the son and his cousins when  they were small. very popular with children for its interactive displays and other moving and touchy-feely exhibits. It attracts over 1 million visitors every year. 

~~~ 

Did you know that the Welsh language was suppressed by law? Following the Acts of the Union in the 16th century, English was made the official language and the use of Welsh was banned in court. Students were discouraged to speak it in classrooms. Fortunately that changed in the previous century. Everywhere I went there were bilingual signage and labels in both English and Welsh. However, it is still classified as 'Vulnerable' by the UNESCO and a minority population, estimated at various points to be 20% to 33%, speak Welsh. 

Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

R is for... Recall ... Relive ... Rejoice ... n ... Reflect

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

R is for Musée Rodin

I first came across Rodin as a young teenager  when a selection of his works went on display at the National Museum in Delhi on a touring exhibition of India. The Kiss and The Thinker were both part of that and made a huge impact - so much so that when I visited Paris decades later, I went looking for those masterpieces in their original home to relive that experience, but with a greater maturity and. a more nuanced, in-depth appreciation. 

Musée Rodin is spread over two properties associated with the famous sculptor - Hôtel Biron in central Paris near the Invalides and his residence and workshop just outside Paris in Meudon. 

 

“I bequeath to the state all my works in plaster, marble, bronze and stone, together with my drawings and the collection of antiquities that I had such pleasure in assembling for the education and training of artists and workers. And I ask the state to keep all these collections in the Hôtel Biron, which will be the Musée Rodin, reserving the right to reside there for the rest of my life.” 

Auguste Rodin, 1909. (Source)

We went to the Hôtel Biron, on a morning when snow had dusted the grounds lightly - that trip had been our first experience of falling snow, both the kiddie son and his mother were equally thrilled. 

Now the building has its own history and weight, it was built in the 1720s by the architect to the king... so...It is a lovely building in itself and  historically significant, later use by Rodin just piles on another layer.  

Hotel Biron. It had snowed that morning, but there was nothing of it on any of
the artworks displayed in the sculpture garden. 

The museum is the most comprehensive on Rodin, his work he left as his legacy to the  world. It has a huge collection of his sculptures and drawings, as well as his personal collection of objects d'art from Egypt, Far East, Greece and Rome. In all the museum has holdings of over 40,000 including some 25,000 photographs. Many of the sculptures are displayed in the  grounds. 

The Kiss. 1882. All the tenderness in the world in that
hand laid on the woman's thigh. Happy to report
that the thrill didn't diminish with age!

The Thinker (1904)  in the sculpture garden. Equally as thrilling.

When we went in there was a travelling exhibition of Henry Moore's work as well in the sculpture garden, which was a massive bonus - two greats with one trip! Because of the snow/cold, we had the whole garden to ourselves too, another bonus. However, that was the off season certainly, I'm sure things are different in the summer or even the spring.

Also thrilled to find works by Henry Moore being
exhibited in the grounds. 

The annual visitor numbers to the main museum at Hôtel Birot are estimated at just over 600,000, with about 14,000 visitors going onto the Meudon site.  Not the same heft as the big three Paris museums by footfall, but very much worth the visit for sculpture fans. Read more about the Musee Rodin by clicking this link here and here. 

R is also for...Rijksmuseum 

Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands national museum of art and history, located in a museum cluster with two others in the Museumplein or Museum Square in Amsterdam. I visited it a very long time ago in the late nineties and haven't had the chance to go back since. I have no photographs of the museum, though I did manage to locate the ones I got at other locations. 

What I remember about it is how dense it was  - gallery after gallery or art, and ceramics, and sculpture, and old historical maps and what have you. For a country that is a so minute - it ranks at 131 out of 195 by area -  for such a teeny-tiny nation, the size and range of its museum was superbly stunning to me. But then the Dutch are different and do things differently too.  

Incidentally, I worked for a Dutch boss at the time, who very kindly passed on a whole bundle of maps and tips - the internet wasn't the  bottomless info heap it is now, Google hadn't become a global Goliath and smartphones were still in the future. Travel wasn't the paperless activity it is. Fun fact - the Dutch VOC had factories in India, and one of them was quite close to my hometown, in a place called Chinsurah. They traded with Bengal for over 200 years till the Brits upstaged them. . As a result of which, Bengali has many loanwords from Dutch. Anyway, back to the museum.

The Rijksmuseum has a collection of over 1 million from 1200 CE to 2000. It has a superb art collection, displaying the works of major Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals. The museum is different from most other art museums in that it didn't begin with a royal collection but with a national art gallery to which the Dutch stadtholders contributed. The Museum originated with 200 artworks in The Hague  in 1800 and grew by acquisitions. It was moved to Amsterdam in 1808, split up and housed at different places, moved back to The Hague, chop and change a few times before moving to its present location in the Rijksmuseum building in 1885.

Must see works there are in the Gallery of Honour and include but are not limited to :

• The Night Watch - Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642

• The Milkmaid - Johannes Vermeer, c 1660

• The Threatened Swan - Jan Asselijn c 1650

• The Jewish Bride - Rembrandt van Rijn C 1665

• Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters - Hendrik Avercamp, 1608

• The Merry Family - Jan Steen. 

The Rijksmuseum is the most visited museum in Amsterdam and drew over 2.3 million visitors in 2025. Pre-pandemic numbers were slightly higher at around 2.7 million. It ranks among the top 25 art museums globally. Both the footfall and the rankings are majorly influenced by Amsterdam being a tourism hub. Note also that the Rijksmuseum has significantly digitised much of its collections and its online visitors are many times the number of physical visitors at over 8 million. It has a pretty impressive reach on its various SM platforms too - 77 million at last count. 

I can very honestly tell you that I enjoyed my physical visit there all those years ago and also my virtual visit this month to research for this post. Their website is a treat! Read more about the Rijkmuseum by clicking the link here and here. 

Other candidates for this post were the Railway Museum in York, UK and the Reserve Bank of India Museum in Kolkata, India,  both are specialised museums on subjects other than art, which I think this series has come to be dominated by. What do you think? Time for some other types of museums perhaps?

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Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

Q is for... Quiet ... n ... Quirk

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

Ah...here come the tough quookies cookies...Q is for Qal'at al Bahrain

Today I'm going back to one of my favourite places in Bahrain - the Qal'at al Bahrain or the Bahrain Fort. The Qal'at al Bahrain is a UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site with several layers of evidence of human settlement there, dating from 2300 BCE to 16th century CE, what's known as a 'tell' in archaeological terms. Around 25% of the tell has been excavated and the structures include various types of buildings  - residential, commercial, military, religious and public. 

The archaeological evidence collectively shows that Bahrain has been settled for over 5000 years and its inhabitants had trade relations with both the Indus Valley Civilisation and Sumer, serving as an important trading hub. The site served as the capital of the Kingdom of Dilmun. In fact, the oldest epic, the Epic of Gilgamesh mentions Dilmun  as a paradise and a meeting point of the Sumerian gods, the original Garden of Eden. The Dilmun economy's main trade was in date molasses/date honey.

The ancient and the new. View of the Seef skyline from inside the Bahrain Fort. 

Dilmun's importance declined by the 1st millennium AD and it was subsequently absorbed into various empires that rose and fell around the Persian Gulf.  Over the millennia therefore, Bahrain has been controlled by Persian Achaemenids, Parthian and Sassanian Empires, by the Greek Seleucid possibly, by Portuguese, Omanis and the British. 

The site museum building from the fort. 

There is a site museum which is tiny but presents this historical timeline in a cogent and interesting way. I've been there countless times, the fort and its surroundings are a great place to go to for people watching or plain relaxation.  The site museum offers a self guided audio tour of the fort. Also a short sound and light show on some evenings - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays in English and Arabic. Not sure if that's been resumed after the pandemic.

The Qal'at al Bahrain - Bahrain Fort. 

It's worth visiting if you're in the area and/or you want to deepen your understanding of Bahrain's history and culture. The museum complements the main Bahrain Museum and it's good to take this one on after the Bahrain National Museum. 

Greek tetradrachms at the site museum. Proof positive
of Seleucid presence on the island. After the Greek
invasion, Dilmun was renamed Tylos. 

.

Read more about the Qal'at al Bahrain  by clicking the link here and here.  And here is the official site, but it is just a brief few lines, that's all. Doesn't do justice imo. 

...also for Queen Charlotte's Cottage

Since we are on Q, I might as well mention the Queen's Cottage. It's one of the historic buildings that are dotted around Kew Gardens in London. I've already talked about Kew Gardens in my K post earlier. In some odd quirk of something Kew sounds exactly like Q too. That feels like sufficient reason to shoehorn it in here...

 Queen's Charlotte's Cottage in the Kew gardens. 

I was there early this month - and because last time we'd spent the whole entire time at the flower beds and Palm House and  the botanical art galleries, this time I made sure to go see the palace and the other royal buildings. Unfortunately the cottage wasn't open to view on the day I was there, but the surrounding area was quiet and lovely, no other visitors apart from us. This video gives a tour of the interior, but the commentary doesn't align with what the official guide says. Both Kew Palace and the Queen's Cottage are maintained by Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity (as distinct from the Royal Botanic Gardens).

 

The Queen's Cottage was built circa 1771, almost a century and a half after the original Kew Palace building was built, at which point it was just a fashionable merchant residence and not a palace.  

The Cottage was built as a rest stop between the Kew Palace and the Richmond Lodge, making it an ideal place  for the royals to refresh themselves during their promenades. It was built as a rustic retreat, an early example of a cottage orne  - the bricks were deliberately rough, the window frames were repurposed from the previous century, the doors were battened  unevenly though inside the rooms were finished with perfect workmanship. The Cottage has two separate entrances as well as staircases - one for the family and one for the staff.

Queen Charlotte and her daughters used the retreat as a private space to take tea, relax and study the plants and animals that surrounded the cottage. It is secluded and in the midst of large paddocks which in the Queen's time contained a menagerie including exotic animals such as zebras and kangaroos. This is the only building that is said to show Charlotte's own decor preferences, though the interiors were refurbished by her daughter Elizabeth in early 1800s.

There are two levels to the building - the lower has a large room decorated with 150 engravings/prints and was used for dining. There is also a kitchen space which originally had no stove so no hot preparations, a stove was added later by the princess. The upper level has a large space with a parabolic roof decorated by elaborate vine and flower botanical paintings, some of which may have been designed and done by Princess Elizabeth herself. 

The cottage was used for the last time in 1818 for the double weddings of William, Duke of Clarence and Edward, Duke of Kent for serving refreshments after the ceremony.  These marriages were solemnised at a crisis point in the monarchy after the only grandchild and legitimate heir of George III and Charlotte passed away tragically young. So the Dukes were pressurised to take wives and produce an heir. Queen Victoria was the result. She hardly ever used the cottage but threw it and its gardens open to the public in 1898 as part of her diamond jubilee celebrations. 

Queen Charlotte's bedroom at the Kew Palace. She used it whenever she visited

Kew and died in this room on Nov 17, 1818. By then, George III's mental and

physical illnesses had worsened so much that he was living in permanent 

seclusion in Windsor. It was felt best that he remain unaware of her passing and

straw was laid down on the cobblestones to muffle the noise of the hearse. George

and Charlotte had a rock solid marriage and 15 children. The King was devoted to

his Queen and never took a mistress, rather unusual for a monarch.

Did you know that Queen Charlotte introduced the custom of festive Christmas trees and Pomeranian dogs  in Britain? She was also a keen amateur botanist and expanded the plantings at Kew Gardens substantially. 

Charlotte, NC and Charlottesville, VA in the USA are both named after Queen Charlotte. There are several other localities in the USA and Canada which have been named  to honour her. Read more about this Queen by clicking the link here. 

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Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026 

P is for ... Paint ... n .. Popular

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

P is for Museo Nacional del Prado

Prado is the national art museum of Spain, located in Madrid. It started, as most of the European art museums did, modelled in part after the Louvre, but different from it in one important aspect - the Louvre's collection originated from nationalised Crown property or confiscated holdings from the Church or nobility as a result of the Revolution. The Prado started with the royal art collection at its core, being  thrown open to the public in 1819 by the then King. 

According to its official Guide, it is the  largest and most significant collection of artworks from the Spanish school including Goya, Velasquez and El Greco. In addition, it has significant holdings of other European masters  such as Rubens, Bosch and Titian. A must visit if one wants an understanding of European art generally and the Spanish school.

It started with 311 paintings initially but that had increased  to 4000 by 1827, in less than a decade. Today its holdings amount to over 20,000 works - 7600 paintings, 8000+ drawings, 4000+ prints and 1000 sculptures. 

The Velasquez Entrance and the main facade of Prado.
Not where the visitor's entry is...

Which is off to the side and the queues were long when I visited.
There was this busker playing rather enticing tunes - I didn't
recognise them but they kept me pleasantly occupied while
we waited in line.  

The oldest artwork there is from the 5th century BCE, the oldest painting from the 12th century, though bulk of its holdings are from the 16th to 18th century royal collection. As such, the museum authorities feel while Prado is not vast like the Louvre, it is 'eloquent' rather than 'exhaustive.'

Must see masterpieces at the Prado include, among others:

• The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch

• Las Meninas - Diego Velasquez

• The Third of may, 1808 - Francisco de Goya

• The Annunciation - Fra Angelico

• The Descent from the Cross - Rogier van der Weyden

• Saturn Devouring his Son - Francisco de Goya 

 

Photography is strictly prohibited inside, I'm not sure why it's done by some museums and not by others. However, mine is not to question why. I like clicking quick photographs in museums as aide memoires, as fatigue always sets in and everything is a blur after a few galleries. The quickpics help me relive the experience and deepens my understanding of the artworks. Anyway, there was no chance of doing that here, so I got the Guide instead. It's less than 500 pages, so it too is nowhere near exhaustive. 

Still life. Always a special interest. From the Guide.

Portrait of Ferdinando Brandani, an official for the
Pope's Secretary. By Velasquez, c. 1650.
Source: The Prado Guide

   

Whatever its size of holdings or gallery space, obviously that has nil to do with Prado's popularity - it is the 13th most visited museum globally. It drew over 3.5 million visitors in 2025, a number that has been rising through the last decade, so much so that museum authorities have introduced crowd control measures to avoid over-tourism. That's borne out by personal experience - it sure was busy when I visited in 2017, as the queue shows in the photo. For all that, it has some superbly amazing art and I had a very pleasant time there. 

Read more about Museo Nacional del Prado by clicking the link here for their website.

P is for Petra

The other place I wanted to tell you about is Petra in Jordan. Like Ellora and Elephanta, this too is rock cut, an entire city half built and half carved out of mountains, only from a far  more ancient time so even more awe inspiring. 

Petra is a premium example of an ancient caravan city connecting Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia, on the trade routes between the  Red Sea and the Dead Sea. The area around Petra had been settled by humans for many millennia, from about 7000 BCE.  The Nabateans,  a nomadic Arab peoples, came to settle in the area in the 4th century BCE. Petra was built by them and later became the capital of the Nabatean kingdom in the 2nd century BCE, based on the proximity to the trade routes and the revenues from it  - incense from Arabia, silks from China and spices from India. 

They were used to harsh desert conditions so could work the land skillfully. The Nabateans were super expert desert farmers, stone carvers and rainwater harvesters. They built an ingenious system of channels, tunnels, diversion dams and cisterns that gave them masterful control of their water resources. There are many types of structures built/carved into the rockfaces, the most famous being Al Khazaneh or The Treasury, which shows distinctive Hellenistic features. Petra is known for its Hellenistic architecture, the proof of their exposure to diverse cultures, all of which were inflenced by Hellenistic culture. 

Petra flourished till the 1st century when a part of was conquered by the Romans in 106 CE and absorbed into the Roman Empire. The city gradually declined under the Roman and Byzantine Empire. As other sea routes opened up and its geographic advantage diminished, Petra became a dead city. It was rediscovered by European travellers in the early 1800s. Formal  excavations started in 1929 and are still ongoing as digital and newer technologies to explore and document historical structures emerge. UNESCO incorporated it as a World Heritage site in 1985.

The ancient city has the remnants of over 800 different structures spanning a range of tombs, monasteries, amphitheatres, streets, temples and cisterns/diversionary dams. It is approached through a narrow gorge called the Siq which opens out dramatically in front of the Treasury building.  

Walking the Siq, some horse carriages were ferrying
 tourists to the entrance.

I visited Petra in winter 2013 - it is a huge area, over 25,000 ha and pedestrian traffic only, so you can imagine it is impossible to cover the whole in a day. Camel, horse and donkey rides were available but I chose to walk. When I went there were no motorised buggies, just horse carriages which covered the Siq only. From thereon it was feet, human or animal. I believe carts/buggies have been introduced in the Siq for elderly and/or disabled passengers since. 

Just before the Siq ends and the city begins.

First view of Al khazaneh or the Treasury,
the most famous building of Petra.

I spent the whole day merrily rambling in and out of buildings and turned back only when I realised the sun was really low. I had got separated from my family and had nothing on me except my camera, my guys had thoughtfully taken my backpack off me somewhere in the Siq. So I had no mobile phone (not that it would have worked inside the Archaeological Park, I don't think), neither any money nor light. Mountains get super dark after nightfall as I know from personal experience. There was a guided tour called 'Petra by Night' but that didn't begin till 8-8:30 pm. So I practically sprinted out of there over the uneven pebble strewn paths and down the Siq and omg! was I glad to see the family waiting for me outside! 

Animals waiting for custom. Petra is carved from mountains of
red sandstone which gives the buildings their distinctive colour.
For this reason Petra is also known as the Rose City. 

Despite the rather undignified scramble at the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my day in Petra and would go back in a heartbeat given half a chance. It is a truly wondrous site that one can return to many times. Jordan itself is a country worth visiting multiple times for its historical/archaeological sites and also for its plethora of Judeo-Christian and Islamic sites of religious significance, if you're into pilgrimages. 

Since I've been there a new site museum has come up with Japanese grant. This is just outside the entrance to the Siq/Petra and houses the arterfacts found among the ruins of the city. Showcases the Nabatean, Edomite and Roman civilisational aspects, the lifestyles and the rise and fall of Petra. Proposed in 2013 and inaugurated in 2019.  Read more here.

The paths of Petra. 

As per UNESCO, Petra is one of the 'world's most famous archaeological sites, where ancient Eastern traditions blend with Hellenistic architecture.' Read more about the reasons why Petra is world heritage material over here.  The ancient city is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Jordan and got over 1 million visitors pre-Covid years. Recovery has been a bit patchy due to regional instability affecting tourism.  And the current war is not helping I'd imagine.

Read more about Petra by clicking the link here and here. 

Did you know that Iran, known as Persia till 1930s, has 29 UNESCO World heritage sites? Several have been reportedly damaged by the recent war, unfortunately. I have been to Tehran as a school kid but don't have any worthwhile memories of the trip. Would definitely like to go that country and explore their super rich and deep history and millennia old historical/cultural connections with both the East and the West. Once the dust settles. Fingers crossed the ceasefire leads to a complete cessation of all violence. 

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Thank you for visiting and reading and particularly for your patience today! Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026