A Museum · Hyderabad, India
Salar Jung Museum
The Deep Dive
The Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad is one of India's three national museums and holds the personal art collection of Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III (1889-1949), Prime Minister to the Nizam of Hyderabad, who spent roughly 35 years amassing artifacts from across the world. Following his death, the collection was first displayed at the family's ancestral palace, Diwan Devdi, where the museum was inaugurated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 16 December 1951. In 1968 it moved to a purpose-built, semicircular building on the banks of the Musi River at Dar-ul-Shifa, designed by architect Mohammed Fayazuddin and opened by President Dr. Zakir Hussain. The Indian Parliament declared it an Institution of National Importance by an Act in 1961, and it is frequently cited as the country's third-largest museum. Spanning 38 galleries across two floors, the museum is renowned for its extraordinary breadth — European sculpture, Mughal weaponry, Persian carpets, Japanese lacquerware, and mechanical curiosities such as its famous musical clock — making it a singular repository of one family's global collecting ambition rather than a state-curated survey of Indian art.
Highlights
- ∞Veiled Rebecca, an 1863 Italian marble sculpture by Giovanni Maria Benzoni, famed for its lifelike carved veil
- ∞Double statue of Mephistopheles and Margaretta (c. 1876), a two-faced marble sculpture visible from either side
- ∞A 19th-century musical clock with over 350 moving parts that chimes on the hour
- ∞Personal effects of historical figures, including Aurangzeb's sword, daggers of Shah Jahan and Jehangir, and Tipu Sultan's wardrobe
- ∞One of the world's largest single-owner collections, spanning Indian, Persian, European, Chinese, Japanese and Egyptian art and antiquities
- ∞A jade collection of 984-plus objects, largely from the Mughal era, and an extensive Mughal, Rajasthani and Deccan miniature painting collection
- ∞Declared an Institution of National Importance by Act of Parliament in 1961
Notable works
- Veiled Rebecca, Giovanni Maria Benzoni (1863)
- Mephistopheles and Margaretta (double statue), Unknown European sculptor (c. 1876)
- Musical clock, Cooke & Kelvey (attributed) (19th century)
- Portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Unknown (19th century)
Sources
- 1. Salar Jung Museum - Wikipedia
- 2. Explore the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad - Incredible India
- 3. Salarjung Museum - Hyderabad District, Government of Telangana
- 4. Hyderabad: Salar Jung footfalls drop drastically - The Hans India
- 5. Salar Jung Museum Hyderabad - Museums of India: National Portal & Digital Repository
More museums
Own the masterpiece the museum guards. Every work held by Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, India that we recreate is finished by hand on archival canvas, numbered as a strictly limited Heirloom edition and built to be inherited — from ₹50,000, delivered across India with white-glove care.