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 

O is for... Out.. Of ... n ... Ordinary

 

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!

O is for Orsay...Musée d'Orsay 

Musee d'Orsay on a winter morning.

This is another one of those - a museum in a stunning building that in itself is a thing of extra ordinary beauty and a joy forever - like the Guggenheim but in a totally different way. Orsay is an artspace  housed in a converted railway station with a super dramatic story of its own. Read that over here. 

In short, it was built on the left bank of the Seine for the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900, to bring in people from SW France to the main Exhibition sites. Gare d'Orsay was the first station designed for electric trains, so no steam or soot or smoke and therefore the architects were able to cover the station with a high glass ceiling. However, it became obsolete by the late 1930s because its platforms were too short to accommodate the longer electric trains. From 1940s onwards it was used for a mishmash  of things - as film location, as political venues, as a temporary centre to hold prisoners and deportees. It came close to demolition in the 1970s and redeveloped into a modern, vastly different looking hotel.  Thankfully, it was saved from that in the nick of time! - the Ministry of Public Works refused planning permission. The station and its hotel were therefore restored and Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated in 1986.

The Musée d'Orsay has a collection of over 18,000 artworks spanning paintings, sculptures, photographs and architectural elements focussing on a specific period of 1848 to 1920ish. It picks up where the Louvre leaves off with respect to Western art, especially the Impressionist and post-Impressionist  artists.  Orsay has a premier set of artworks by super renowned masters like Monet, Renoir, Manet, van Gogh, Cezanne, Rodin and Degas. Must see works there include 

• Woman with a Parasol  - Claude Monet, 1875. Incidentally, Orsay has a collection of nearly 100 paintings by the artist and is one of the topnotch art galleries to view his works, including the Blue Water Lilies (1919)  and Wild Poppies (1873)

• Starry Night over the Rhone - Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Orsay's collection includes more than 20 of his works including the Self Portrait painted in 1889 and The Church at Auvers (1890). 

• La Classe de Danse (The Ballet Class) - Edgar Degas (1874-76). The museum hold over 100 artworks by Degas, including paintings, pastels, drawings and some of his bronzes. 

• Apart from the above, the collection includes several significant works by Renoir, Manet, Gauguin, Courbet, Whistler,  Cezanne and several others. Among the sculptures are preeminent works by Rodin, Carpeaux, Gauguin and Degas and other French masters.

The Musée d'Orsay is the second most visited museum in Paris and ranks consistently among the top ten art galleries visited globally. It attracted 3.75 million visitors in 2024 and around 3 million in 2010, the year I was there.  I had half a day in the museum, totally not enough, one could spend an entire week in there. I'd visit again if I had the chance, and this time, I'd allow some time to go to Claude's garden in Giverny to see his lily pond that inspired him. 

Read more about the Orsay by clicking on the link here, here and here. JFYI, the museum is renovating its reception areas from March 2026 to 2028, so please check what's accessible for viewing if you're planning to visit.

O is also for the unfinished Obelisk 

Image credit

This one is in the Aswan quarries in Egypt, thought to be commissioned by Hatshepsut (1473-1458 BCE, we've met her earlier in my H-post) for the Temple of Amun Ra in Karnak. It was likely abandoned halfway because of flaws discovered in the stone. I visited it sometime in 2011, it is even more impressive up close, walking round the whole things is quite good exercise. My camera at that point didn't have the capacity to fit the entire obelisk into a single frame. The Obelisk is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is visited by thousands everyday.

Had it been successfully completed, it would have stood 42 metres high, higher than any other Egyptian obelisk. And weighed a mind boggling 1168 tonnes too! - to be floated down the Nile to Luxor, a distance of 200 odd kms and then erected to stand vertically like a pointing finger at the sky. All without a single unit of  electric or steam energy, on human sweat and muscle power and willpower alone. Hats entirely off!

Image credit

Did you know that this interior clock, originally designed to guide travellers in Gare d'Orsay has become an iconic symbol of the museum? It is one of the most photographed areas in the space and offers stunning views of the Seine and Montmartre through its glass dial, accessible to visitors from the top floor.  

There are actually three monumental clocks in the museum, two on the exterior facade and one inside. They were designed by French architect Victor Laloux (1850-1937) as part of the station in 1900. These Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau style clocks blend industrial functionality with Belle Epoque aesthetic values and have become signature pieces of the museum and popular exhibits in themselves.

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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 

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?

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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 

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