Museum · Hyderabad, Telangana
Salar Jung Museum
One family's collection, mostly one man's, given to the nation and opened in 1951. Indian miniatures, ivory, jade and textiles alongside European marble and clocks.
See first
- Indian miniatures from the Mughal, Deccan, Rajasthani and Thanjavur schools
- Raja Ravi Varma's Stolen Interview
- Veiled Rebecca, the marble Salar Jung I bought in Rome
- Mephistopheles and Margaretta, the two-faced carving
- The clock room and its musical clock
Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III (1889–1949), was Prime Minister of Hyderabad under the Nizam. He spent much of his income over thirty-five years buying objects from across the world. After his death the collection was shown in his family palace, Diwan Devdi, and opened as a museum by Nehru on 16 December 1951. In 1968 it moved to its present building at Dar-ul-Shifa, on the south bank of the Musi.
Local memory holds that what survives is about half of what he bought; the Nawab trusted his staff to keep watch, and some of them did not. More went missing in the move.
What remains is still a great deal. The Indian galleries cover bronze, sculpture, textiles, ivory, jade, arms and metalwork. The miniatures include fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Gujarati manuscripts on leaves and Deccan paintings from Golconda and Bijapur. The museum holds two paintings by Ravi Varma.
Most visitors head for Veiled Rebecca and the clocks. See those, then go back to the Deccan paintings.