N is for Nifty ...n ... Natural ...

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

N is for North West

N is actually an easy letter to write to, because every nation in the world has what it calls a National Museum of Something or Other. There's the National Museum in Delhi, which I've visited some 15-20 years back. Among other things, I recall seeing a burial site from Harappan times complete with a woman's remains with conch shell bangles still encircling her arm bones, the exact same type of bangles that are used by Bengali women in my hometown as marital jewellery even today in an unbroken tradition going back 3500 years. 

There are the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, also the Natural History (a total bonza candidate!) of the UK, all of which I've been to. A quick search on the Net shows that there are more than 100,000+ museums in the world designated as National Museums! You see what I mean by easy?

The  interior of the Natural History Museum in London, UK.
 The building itself is beyond spectacular!

Natural History Museum, stained glass to die for -
one could go there only to revel in the architectural
 elements and take in the exhibits as an afterthought.

However, as you know, I am no great fan of easy. So today we're going farther North. North West to be precise. Far beyond Europe or UK. Across the pond to Raleigh, North Carolina and a cluster of museums that I visited 2023-24 winter  - the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the North Carolina Museum of History and the NC Museum of Art. 

The NC Museum of Natural Sciences. An area of over 300,000
 sq ft and the largest such institution in SE USA. It also has facilities
elsewhere in the state. Contains a vast collection of
over 2.5 million specimens. 

The NCMNS has its exhibits spread over 7 floors,
includes dioramas of various life forms found in NC, 
prehistoric Mesozoic life as well as reconstructed
skeletons of dinosaurs.

The star of the show. The Acrocanthosaurus 
skeleton in the atrium.

The NC Museum of Natural Sciences is the most visited museum in the state with over a million visitors annually. Certainly it was busy when I went in during the winter holidays. Read more about the museum by clicking the link here. 

N is for NC Museum of History

In contrast, the NC Museum of History was more compact and basic. The oldest human settlement in the NC area goes back some 14,000 years. However, bulk of what I saw was focussed on the post colonisation period after entry by Europeans. Pre-Columbian Native American history is quite sketchy and from my SM posts at the time, the narration in the audio referred to Native Americans  as 'Indians' which felt uber strange to me. No detailed history of the separate tribes, only some reference to the way things panned out between the two sides, Europeans and Native Americans.  The museum is currently closed for renovations, coming back bigger and better and hopefully more in-depth treatment of Native American history. 

North Carolina Museum of History. This section
 called 'The Story of North Carolina' takes up the
entire lower level gallery space.

Archaeological evidence of human stone tool usage in NC. There
are very few exhibits after this till the 16th century when the
Europeans first came. In a country that's eye deep in research
and research grants that definitely felt a bit weird to me. 

I was mega-chuffed with this section of the museum
 as you can easily imagine. I'm sure I used this for
my posts in A-Z that following April. 

What I wrote at the time was - the museums that I've visited (in NC) have been super interesting, not always in terms of the depth of the collections or the age of the exhibits but in how the whole attempt is to engage young minds from the very start, the efforts at creating a community long term, the discerning marketing - and I mean that in the most positive sense, not the usual commercialisation con that's meant by it nowadays.

A whole gallery was devoted to a schoolchildren's organisation called the Tar Heel Junior Historians' Association with child members of different age slabs and from various schools participating in programmes and competitions. Creating an appreciation of history and how it is made and studied - from the role of everyday lists and journals to doctors' prescriptions to architecture, from regular print and AV media to social media. A palpable sense of continuity - today's ordinary events lived by ordinary people turning into history tomorrow. Exactly my idea of the primary work that a museum should be doing.

And finally... the North Carolina Museum of Art

During my visit there was an exhibition titled 'Dutch Art in a Global Age' which is where I spent the lion's share of my time. The special exhibition presented paintings and objects d'art from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, complemented by five of NCMAs own Dutch masters' paintings - it explored the interfaces between colonial expansion, commercial networks of trade and their impact on Dutch art. There were works by celebrated Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Rachel Ruysch and others.

Art fan at the exhibition. Wooded River Landscape with Shepherd.
Jacob van Ruisdale. Painted 1650-55. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Since I had written on this topic before (for WEP's prompt Antique Vase) I obviously found it mega fascinating. The whole exhibition highlighted the connections between exploration, colonial expansion, trade, exposure to new products/cultures and their impact on art - both on how it was created and how it was consumed. As the Dutch VOC ships explored new routes and opened up the world, the commerce in tobacco, sugar, pepper, hitherto unknown fruits and flowers, ceramics from China etc became incorporated into the painting of Dutch still lifes. Tobacco, for instance, became a subgenre of stilleven by itself. As did breakfast items, often depicting sugar. I learnt a few new things, feasted my eyes upon lovely colours and objects and felt thoroughly satisfied with the use of my time there.

Rene Descartes. By Johann Suyderhoef. Engraving.
Around 1650. The French philosopher found it easier to
write in the comparatively tolerant Netherlands after he
angered the RC Church in France. 

One of the stillevens of fruits introduced from
foreign lands.

An exposition on how colonial expansion impacted art.
There were maps too, charting the routes the Dutch ships
took. And similar ones on how demographics changed
and a merchant class grew and along with that
a demand for secular art depicting the new
luxurious lifestyles.  

All in all, a day extremely well and enjoyably spent.

The museum has an area of 164 acres and an annual footfall of over 1 million. Read more about the NC Museum of Art by clicking the link here.

I find it makes me a bit uncomfortable that a state with a 14,000 year deep history has comprehensive archaeological/historical evidence preserved only for the last 500 or so. Most of the Native American history that I saw at the NC museums are through modern day recreations in pictures/tableaux and audio visual animations. It bothers me vaguely. What about you?

I understand that there is a Museum of Native American History in Arkansas which has actual Pre-Columbian to Paleo artefacts, 10,000 of them! I don't quite understand how such a huge period has yielded a few thousand items only...but better a few than nothing at all I guess, will have to check this one out when/if I get the chance. Have you been there? If so, what was your experience like?

 ~~~

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 

M is for... Met ...n ... Model ...

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

M is for The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met on a sunny summer's day.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, often called the Met for short, is  an encyclopaedic museum of art. It is by area the largest art space in the Americas. Located in New York along what is known as the Museum Mile, it is the most visited in NYC and fourth by visitor numbers globally. Its over 490,000 collections span art from all corners of the world covering about 5000 years of human history. I visited it about 5 years ago and I'd go back in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose!

Detail of the Fourteen Year Old Dancer by Edgar
Degas. 1922. Tutu added later.

The Met began in 1870 in Paris with a group of American philanthropists, artists and financiers who wanted to bring art and art education to common American people. The original collection was around 175 paintings and has grown to its current size organised into 17 separate curatorial departments. Its collections comprise of masterpiece paintings, sculptures, objects d'art, furniture, musical instruments, costumes, armour and weapons and other historical objects as well as contemporary artworks. Among them are works by Vermeer, Degas, van Gogh and Hokusai and other super famous names. As well as Egyptian Pharaonic temples and eye-popping Egyptian objects. The Met has holdings of exquisite works of Islamic and Near Eastern art and also those from classical antiquity. It is a space where one can lose track of time altogether.

The museum got around 5.7 million visitors in 2025. Read more about the Met by clicking the link here. 

M is also for Madurodam 

Madurodam is a miniature theme park and tourist attraction in the Hague, the capital of the Netherlands. It is named after George Maduro, a young student who fought the Nazi occupation. Madurodam exhibits a range of scale models, exact replicas of various important and famous Dutch landmarks. They include the Binnenhof, the seat of the government; Schiphol airport; canal houses; windmills and the port of Rotterdam among others.  In short, it showcases the Dutch way of life to visitors. It was opened in 1952 and attracts 600,000-700,000 visitors every year. I've visited it sometime in the late 90s and remember being impressed by the meticulousness and the attention to detail. There are miniature trees and people, correctly attired for the season. There are tulip fields and football stadia and train stations, all 1:25 scale exact replicas down to the very last detail. The Dutch are perfectionists!

Madurodam, 1999. Yours truly is there in the photo only for
illustration of scale.

Even without any humans in the frame, the scale is evident from
the regular height buildings in the background. 

Read more about Madurodam by clicking the link here.

Another super famous candidate for M is undoubtedly Madame Tussaud's Waxwork Museum which has a slightly different type of models. It is not exactly a museum but an interactive theme park type visitor attraction. I've been there as a kiddie kid only once, there were just two Madame Tussaud's then - the main in London and another in Amsterdam (I've never visited that). They are now dozens of them in multiple cities all across the world. Never had the chance or the inclination really tbh, to go back to Madame Tussaud's London because of the rush. The London waxworks get around 2.5 visitors annually, yikes. 

No photos from that long ago visit, sadly but I do remember I enjoyed myself there, especially in the Chamber of Horrors, as crime was always one of my favourite genres even then. Read about Madame Tussaud's here.

Did you know there is a mini- Europe in Belgium? Though I have been to Antwerp I haven't been round to that. There are similar miniature parks in Germany and Israel as well. Are there any miniature parks where you live? 

~~~

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 

L is for... Let's talk about the ...Largest...

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

L is for the Louvre

The Louvre is the top visited museum worldwide, holding its preeminent position for decades altogether all through the 20th century, for the longest time. It was also the largest museum globally till October 2025, occupying over 350,000 sq feet of space and housing a collection spanning prehistory to mid 20th century. (The Grand Egyptian Museum opened in November 25 and overtook the Louvre, so now it's got pushed to the second place) However, it remains a firm favourite with both local and foreign tourists and is still the most visited museum in the world. It got 9 million visitors last year, of which roughly a quarter were local French/residents and three quarters were foreign visitors. It is so popular that museum officials have expressed concerned about over-attendance!

I have visited the Louvre twice, once with my parents long, long ago and once again with my kid, also long ago now. No sensible photographs from those visits, as the DSLR was still in the future and phone cameras were still quite basic. But it doesn't matter as the Louvre is super well known and familiar to most museum lovers. (And also to the readers of the Da Vinci Code!).

The Building

Let's talk about the buildings first - quite historic on their own. The Louvre was originally a fortress, first built around 1190 on the orders of Phillip II (later Phillip Augustus), as he planned to leave for the Third Crusade. He had a defensive wall built around Paris and the Louvre Castle protected its western side on the right bank of the Seine. Parts of this fortress have been excavated and can be viewed in the basement of the modern day Museum. 

The protective walls were expanded in the 14th century. In 1364, the Louvre's defensive purpose was altered and it became the royal residence - a palace for the first time in the reign of Charles V. The Louvre continued to be used as an arsenal and a prison in the 15th century, but the royal preference shifted to other palaces for residing and the buildings fell into disrepair. In the 16th century, the Louvre was modernised and made into a Renaissance style palace, other palace buildings were built  nearby in the Tuileries  and connected to the Louvre. 

The royal court moved to Versailles in 1682, therefore the Louvre came to be occupied by various institutions and individuals as tenants as well as squatters, the Louvre was abandoned. By the close of the 18th century, the French Revolution had changed the use of the buildings again - the king was forced to return from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace, his courtiers moved into the nearby Louvre. But as the Revolution progressed they emigrated out and more individuals occupied their quarters. In January 1793, the French king was guillotined and by August, the revolutionary government decreed that the former royal palace should be a national museum for the public display of its collection of masterpiece paintings and priceless object d'art and that was that! From fortress to palace to abandoned to museum in 6 centuries. 

In the 1980s the Louvre Pyramid was constructed as the main entrance to handle increasing visitor numbers. Much controversy surrounded it at the time and still continues. It has however, become a symbol of the Louvre regardless of whether it's loved or hated. 

Read more about the Louvre buildings by clicking the links here and here. 

The collections

Do you know where one of the earliest law codes - the Code of Hammurabi, is located? Yup, it's at the Louvre. That museum has nearly half a million pieces from the earliest human civilisations from 7000 BCE to the 1840s. From Neolithic Stone Age statues to Renaissance masterpieces and objects d'art. Take a virtual peek at some of their most famous  collections here.

The Louvre houses some of the most iconic art - the most famous being the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, 1503-19) by Leonardo  da Vinci (nice fit for the day's letter, how lucky is that ha!). Other must-see attractions include :

• the Venus de Milo (classical Greek statue depicting Aphrodite, dated to 2nd century BCE) 
• The Winged Victory (classical Greek statue of the goddess Nike also dated to 2nd century BCE)
• The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese (Painting depicting Biblical subject of the wedding feast where Jesus turns water into wine, 1562-63)
• The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Jericho (1818-19)
• Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio (1604-06)

Read more about the Louvre and its collections by clicking on the link here to access their very comprehensive website available in both French and English.

Did you know that there's a Louvre Abu Dhabi that is an art space on the Saadiyat Island known as 'France's largest cultural project abroad'? It came into being through a treaty between the French and Emirati governments that licenses the space to use the name Louvre till 2047. It is the largest gallery space in the Arabian Peninsula and has a signature 'leaves of light' dome which replicates the effect of sunlight filtered through palm leaves in the central atrium of the space. It was inaugurated in 2017 and drew 1.4 million visitors in 2025. On my wishlist for sometime now, unfortunately I left the UAE in 2008 and haven't had an opportunity to visit Abu Dhabi since for anything else but a short layover in the airport between connecting flights.  Read more about the LAD here.

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 

K is for... Knock out ...n ...Knowledge ...

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

K is for Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is a botanical park, or more correctly the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world renowned park and a World Heritage site. It was initiated by Princess Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales and the mother of King George III (whose reign has come to be defined by two main historical events - the American Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States, and the Regency brought about by his mental illness).  Anyway, Princess Augusta started a 9 acre botanic garden in the pleasure grounds of Kew in 1759 which has grown to 300 acres and become the UNESCO site we know today (here's a brief timeline). It is the largest botanical garden in the world and has the most diverse collection of plants, housing over 50,000 living plants and 7 million preserved specimens in the herbarium. Kew also has its own  fascinating A-Z btw, have a peek here.

I'd been planning and plotting to go to Kew since the late 90s, but there are so many things to do and see in London that I never made it to the Gardens till 2018. It is totally a knock out visitor attraction and there are sub-attractions within the attraction to boot. I've just been on a repeat visit early this month. Spring in the gardens is beyond awesome. Tulips and cherry blossoms and camellias and a gazillion others all in bloom. 

As far as museums go, Kew has several separate botanical museums and gallery spaces - Museum 1 is near the Palm House and houses collections on economic botany including tools, ornaments, food and medicines. The Marianne North Gallery and Shirley Sherwood Gallery both showcase botanical art, the former dedicated to Marianne North's work and the latter exhibiting both classic and contemporary art. Here is a guide to the Marianne North Gallery. Marianne challenged the idea of painting flowers/botanicals in the studio as was common in her time and went out to paint plants in their natural setting. 

Marianne North Gallery at the Kew Gardens. This Gallery
first opened  in the 1880s. It  displays the botanical paintings
of Marianne North, the daughter of a MP and a widely travelled
lady from a time when women didn't travel much. It's the only
art space dedicated to a single artist in England.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery, which is connected to the Marianne North Gallery,  has a collection of more than 1000 paintings of 300 artists, from 36 countries.  

Apart from these art spaces, the Kew Palace, the Queen's Cottage and the Queen's Garden are of historical significance and/or monuments in their own right. So are the temples and structures such as the Great Pagoda and the Ruined Arch. 

The Great Pagoda built in 1762.

Flowers at Kew, the Botanical Brasserie is in
the background. Summer 2018. 

Flowers at Kew, from the Great Border Walk.
Spring 2026. 

Flowers at Kew, Spring 2026.

The Kew Gardens are a top rated attraction and though the travel time from central London is around half an hour or so,  Kew gets over a million visitors annually.  (Hyde Park, also a Royal Park and more importantly, more accessible as it is located in the heart of the city and has no entry fee, unlike Kew, gets around 13 million visitors in a year). 

The Ruined Arch built in 1759-60.

Kew Gardens have a comprehensive website detailing all the various buildings, structures, plant groups and different aspects of economic botany that might be of interest to visitors physical  and virtual. The herbarium is mostly digitised and available to researchers.  Kew is one of the most important botanical knowledge resources used by scholars and conservators worldwide, apart from being a delightful tourist attraction and a family picnic spot. Read more about Kew by clicking the link here. 

K is also for Karnak

Karnak is a massive Pharaonic era temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor, Egypt consisting of several sprawling structures. These were a part of the monumental city of Thebes, the capital city of Ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and the New kingdom periods. The earliest  construction of Karnak has been dated to around 2055 BCE. The temple has been added to  from then on till Roman times, so Karnak has continued to expand over a period of 2000 years. It consists of several shrines to different gods/goddesses, pylons and hypostyle halls. 

Colossi of Pharaoh's at the temple entrance

Obelisk inside Karnak. Installed by Hatshepsut, btw.
The tourist chap gives an idea of the scale to which
the Ancient Egyptians built. Kewl or what?

The avenue of Rams. 

There are four main precincts in Karnak - the precincts of Amun-Re (the top god. The protector of Pharaohs, the king of the gods fused from the invisible power of the sun and the wind), Mut (mother goddess and the consort of Amun Re), Montu (the god of war, depicted as a falcon-headed or bull-headed man) and the temple of Amenhotep IV. The last was a fascinating chap - he changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten and founded the first ever monotheistic religion by abandoning the pantheon of Egyptian gods to worship solely the sun-god Aten.  Incidentally, all Pharaohs were considered divine, gods in their own right. They were the living reincarnation of the son of the sun god Re and were the intermediaries between the gods and human, keeping order in the world through their divine powers. Anyway, I digress. Coming back to Karnak, only the largest precinct - that of Amun Re is open to the public, the rest are either being restored or not safe to view.  

The ruins of Karnak are considered an open air museum and are the second most visited Ancient Egyptian site after the Giza Pyramids.  I've visited Karnak multiple times, however, there are photos only from the visit in 1998. The other times I was there for the Son et Lumiere or the light was poor and so no snaps. 

K is also for Konark

Konark is a ruined sun temple located in the eastern coast of India, in Odisha, an overnight journey from my hometown in Kolkata.  It  was built around 1250 CE and is recognised as an iconic example of Odisha (also known in medieval times as Kalinga) temple architecture. showcasing intricate stone sculpting skills. The original temple consisted of two parts a tiered pyramidal structure at the front with the main temple tower behind and rising far above it. Today only the former building remains. The temple complex also included other buildings such as the naat mandapa or the dance hall.

The pyramidal temple structure is built in the form of  a chariot - Surya Dev or the sun god in Indian mythology travels the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses (7 colours of the rainbow, 7 days of the week - that number is not a coincidence!) There are 24 wheels of the chariot, each with eight major spokes, also symbolic of time measurement on the Indian scale (a day is divided into 24 hours and  8 prahara, each roughly 3 hours). The entire plinth of the temple is carved with animal. human, and floral motifs, depicting mythological tales, scenes from ordinary life, musicians, hunters, women applying makeup or wringing their wet hair and so on. Among them are also maithuna figures - couples engaged in ritual sex. The detail and finesse of the sculptures are mesmerising. 

The Konark temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site and draws thousands of visitors daily - I was one of them in 2013. Read more about Konark by clicking the link here. 

The wheel of the chariot.

The part that still stands - the chariot of the sun god. 

One of the statues of the deity.

A women waiting for her husband/lover at the door. 

A pillar from the dance hall.

Did you know that around 400 specimens kept in the herbarium at Kew were collected by Charles Darwin himself on his Beagle voyage? I kind of keeled over in awe when I read that.

~~~

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 

J is for Jaw-dropping... n... Journeys

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

J is for Jewel House

...which is the treasury in the Tower of London, where the Crown Jewels and royal regalia of the British monarchy are held and publicly displayed. The personal collections of the monarch is not housed here, so no Lovers Knot, Vladimir  tiaras etc, those are kept in an underground vault at Buck Palace. The ones at the Jewel House are essentially the pieces (including jewelled swords, sceptres and weapons) used for state ceremonial occasions. They include the State Imperial Crown and the Royal Sceptre set with the Cullinan diamonds I and II,  also the Queen Mother's Crown set with the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Each of the pieces have journeyed from different corners of the earth and represent the vanished length and breadth of the British Imperial power. 

Originally the medieval  Crown Jewels were held at Westminster Abbey, but in 1649 after the English Civil War, the  then monarch Charles I was beheaded and Parliament ordered the Crown Jewels to be moved to the Tower to be sold or destroyed. The monarchy was restored with the ascension of Charles II, son of Charles I, in 1661. Most of the Crown Jewels date from his coronation after the Restoration, only the coronation spoon dates from the 12th century and is the oldest piece.  The Crown Jewels have been available for some form of public viewing since 1665.

I have been to the Tower and the Jewel House on two of my visits to London - once in 1975 and again in 1999, the displays had changed substantially in the interim.  Better lighting, big screen displays, a travelator, better crowd management. Incidentally, today the Crown Jewels are viewed by an estimated 2.5 million visitors annually. 

Photography was not permitted obviously, so there are no personal photographs. Which would be somewhat superfluous anyways, considering these must be some of the most photographed items in the world. Read about the Jewel House here and here. You can view some of the Crown Jewels virtually by clicking on the link here. 

J is also for Jorasanko 

Jorasanko Thakur Bari (lit Jorasanko Tagore House) in Kolkata is the ancestral property of the Tagore family where Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore was born in May, 1861. The mansion was built in 1784 by the scions of the family who, for one reason or another, left their original family residence in a neighbourhood called Pathuriaghata deep in North Calcutta, the traditional abode of the Bengali rich and famous. 

The lane entrance to the Jorasanko Thakur Bari
is marked by this gate. Photography inside the
galleries is not permitted. Also not permitted in
the old aristocratic residences of Calcutta. Can't
for the life of me fathom why.

 

Rabindranath is the most famous Tagore globally  - he was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel for literature, he renounced his knighthood to protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, he wrote thousands of songs and poems, reams of short stories, plays, novels, letters, essays, he erased the lines  of diglossia between colloquial spoken Bengali and  formal written Bengali, he is to Bengali what Shakespeare is to English. Two of his songs went on to be adopted as national anthems of two countries - India and Bangladesh. When the British colonial government proposed to divide Bengal along religious lines, he countered that with a Hindu-Muslim Rakhi ceremony, where members of the two communities came together to tie a rakhi (a sacred thread of protection and friendship traditionally tied by sisters on their brothers' wrists to honour sibling bonds). You will find buildings and streets and cultural institutions and schools named after him all across the world, from Argentina and Chile to Vietnam and Japan, from Paris and Dublin to Madrid and Prague, from Bali and Australia to Mexico and Mauritius and Egypt. So it stands to reason that in his birthplace the Jorasanko family property is a museum dedicated to Rabindranath's life and times and houses a university named after him. 

In addition, however, the Tagore family itself had many luminaries at the forefront of the Bengal Renaissance and Bengali socio-cultural life. The Bengal School of Art pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore (Rabindranath's nephew) impacted the development of Indian modern art. Jnanadanandini Devi (sister-in-law) popularised the Nivi style saree, the most common saree style associated with Indian women today.  The Tagores were major social reformers and championed women's education, opposed inhuman  caste- and gender discriminatory practices such as sati and actively encouraged widow remarriage. In short, the Tagore family's contributions to the religious (the Brahmo Samaj, grandfather Dwarakanath was a founding member), social, cultural, industrial and political life of 19th-20th century Bengal and indeed, wider India, cannot be overstated. Naturally, the museum has galleries dedicated to these other aspects of Bengal's history as well.  Read more about the Jorasanko Thakur Bari Museum by clicking the link here. For some reason photography in the galleries isn't permitted, I cannot fathom why.

I must have visited this as a young child but don't have any memories at all. Need to create some pronto. On my immediate to-visit list. 

~~~

Did you know about the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre? It happened on 13th April, 1919 so this is the 107th anniversary. Around 20,000 non-violent protesters and general picnickers/public had gathered in the open grounds known as Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab. The British had prohibited gatherings of more than four in Amritsar due to political tensions, but the announcements were made at a busy, noisy time and many residents had missed them. And so they had gathered there for the Vaisakhi holiday.  They were mowed down by gunfire by British troops without any attempts to disperse the crowd. 

There is a site museum there now (also on my wish-list), a memorial to the unarmed protesters/public killed by a ruthless colonial military officer called Colonel Reginald Dyer, who wrote in his report that he had heard that 200-300 people were shot dead and British troops had fired 1650 rounds of ammunition, about a third of what they had brought to the grounds.  British authorities said 379 people were killed, the Indians estimates vary between 1500 and 2000. Dyer was widely condemned in Britain, reprimanded by the Army Council and made to retire from duty the following year. 

QE II visited the site several times during her reign, also the then Prince Charles, David Cameron too but there have been zilch official apologies for the killings. For Jallianwala Bagh and/or the millions killed due to other colonial atrocities. Don't quite understand why because I don't think anyone in India is asking for/expecting reparations. Personally I don't believe descendants should be made to pay for their foreparents' crimes. that's just an impractical idea. I'd be quite okay with a token one quid and one whole, sincere apology. But neither is forthcoming and I'm not holding my breath. 

Thank you for visiting and for your patience on this one! 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 

I is for...Invaluable ... n ... Ivory

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

I is for the Indian Museum

The Indian Museum in Kolkata is not just the oldest museum in India but was also the oldest and largest multiuse museum in Asia by breadth of collection. It was established in 1814, that's more than 200 years ago, as part of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Read about the early history of the Museum here.

Consistent visitor numbers are hard to find, but an estimated  ~ 220,000 people visited the Museum in 2024. I have visited it multiple times, couple of times as a schoolkid of which I have little or no memory. The visits I do remember are the ones as adults, once with my child to acquaint him with his own country's history and then again without him. 

It is wondrous and frustrating at the same time. The labels are cryptic without any elaboration, many of the exhibits are not as well lit as they should be, above all, it is not interactive and doesn't engage young people the same way as other museums I've visited, do. However, be that as it may, the exhibits will make you forget all these petty peeves. Absolutely jaw dropping invaluable historical artefacts all over the place. From millennia ago to the 19th century. 

Kushan terracotta. 1st-3rd century CE. On the
glass there's a reflection of a terracotta
pot from the same era. 

A sculpture of a Makar - a mythical beast that's often
found as guardians of temple and palace entrances.11th
Century. Zoom in to see the details. The carving is on
basalt, one of the hardest rocks to sculpt. Btw, also
gives an idea of how large the building is. 

The Museum has 35 galleries divided into 6-7 broad areas - Art, Archeology, Anthropology, Geology, Zoology and Economic Botany. The oldest artifacts in the collection include 1.5 million year old stone tools from the Stone Age, a 4000 year old Egyptian mummy and various objects from the Indus Valley Civilisation aged 4000-4500 years. 

The remnants of a Buddhist stupa  dating from the
1st century BCE  in the Bharhut Gallery. Excavated,
transported in pieces and recreated by Alexander
Cunningham in the late 1870s.

The exposition of the Bhagavat Gita at the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
Ivory. Rajasthan. 18th century.

Venugopala flanked by mythical guardian beasts. Lintel from
temple. Granite. Halebidu, Karnataka. 12th century.

Like I said, there's nothing interactive and it doesn't do much to highlight the marvellousness of the invaluable collections. No audio guides, no video clips, no large charts even explaining the backstories of the hows and whys of the people who carved/built/painted/wove these amazing things without electric power tools. Also, like most large museums, only a part of the entire collection is open for viewing by the public at any given time. Even so, well worth popping in if you're in the area. Read more about the Indian Museum by clicking the links here and here.

~~~

Did you know that the Indian Museum has gone through several iterations? It was initially called the Asiatic Society Museum, then the Imperial Museum and finally the Indian Museum. It is also known in Bengali as Jadughar (lit Magic House) or Ajabghar (lit Wonder-inducing House). 

 

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 

H is for ... Henry .. n ... Humongous

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

G is for...Geometry ... n ... Goosebumps

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!

F is for... Fee

 

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

All through April I'll be 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!