Salar Jung Museum

The Salar Jung Museum stands on Salar Jung Road in Darulshifa, on the south bank of the Musi River in the Old City of Hyderabad, Telangana, India. It is one of the largest single-person collections in the world, formed by the Salar Jung family, especially Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III, who served as prime minister of Hyderabad State and devoted much of his life to collecting. After his death in 1949 the collection was opened to the public, and the museum was inaugurated in 1951 at the family's palace Dewan Deodi before moving to its present purpose-built building in 1968. It is now an institution of national importance under the Government of India. The museum holds roughly 40,000 objects, and its range covers Indian art, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern art, European sculpture and painting, jade, ivories, textiles, carpets, arms and armour, clocks, and a large library of rare manuscripts and Quran copies. Among its best-known pieces are the Veiled Rebecca marble sculpture, a double-figure wooden statue known as Mephistopheles and Margaretta, and a musical clock that draws crowds at the hour. Other displays include Mughal jades belonging to emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan and Nizam-era furniture. The building is a two-storey structure with around 38 galleries arranged around a central court. The curatorial approach is broadly thematic and regional, with galleries devoted to civilisations, materials and periods, rather than a single chronological path. Labels are largely in English, Hindi and Urdu. Restoration and renovation work has been carried out in stages to update galleries, lighting and storage, and conservation of manuscripts and textiles is an ongoing activity of the museum. Because of its scale, a full visit takes at least three to four hours, and many visitors choose to focus on a handful of galleries. The museum is closed on Fridays.