Lahore Museum
The Lahore Museum or Ajaib Ghar (Urdu: Wonder House) is a museum in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. It is the largest and best museum in the country.
| Lahore Museum | |
|---|---|
| عجائب گھر لاہور | |
| 200px Entrance to the museum | |
| Established | 1865, later shifted to present site 1894 |
| Location | The Mall, Lahore Punjab Pakistan |
| Type | Archaeology, art, heritage, modern history, religious |
| Collection size | Pre & Proto, Coins, Hindu Buddhist & Jain, Gandhara, Islamic, Manuscripts, Miniature Paintings, General Collection, Arms, Ethnological, Postage & Stamps, Arts & Crafts, Contemporary Paintings, Pakistan Movement Gallery |
| Visitor figures | 250,000 in 2005 |
| Website | Official website |
History
The original old Lahore Museum was made during British Indian times in the 1860s, in what had been the old 'Punjab Exhibition Hall'[1] and the famous gun Zam Zama was installed outside it in 1870. This old museum, along with the Punjab School of Arts (later the Mayo College of Arts) was looked after by John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) father of the writer Rudyard Kipling, who mentioned the museum and Zam Zama in his Kim (book) (1901).[2] In 1894, the museum's new building was completed and it moved there[3] the same year, right opposite the old campus of the University of the Punjab, on the Mall.
Collection
The Lahore Museum is set in its beautiful grounds and has one of the best collections of arts and artifacts in its galleries in South Asia. Especially notable are:
- ancient Gandhara Buddhist sculptures
- Tibetan and Hill States collection
- collection of miniature paintings from the Mughal Empire and the Pahari school
- collection of contemporary paintings by some of Pakistan's most prominent artists such as Ustad Allah Bux, A.R. Chughtai, Shakir Ali, Sadequain, Gulgee and others.
Lahore Museum Media
The Tollinton Market building was the first in which the museum's collection was displayed.
The current museum building was designed in the syncretic Indo-Saracenic Revival architectural style by renowned architect Sir Ganga Ram.
The Lahore Museum cornerstone for existing building, laid February 3rd 1890 by Prince Albert Victor, is embedded in the pillar at the Museum entrance
Indus Valley Civilisation collection - terracotta female figurine
A Gandharan-era "Fasting Buddha"
A Gandharan-era miniature stupa
Relics from the Indo-Greek era
Gandharan_Athena
References
Further reading
- Whitehead, Richard Bertram (1914). Catalogue of Coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore; Indo-Greek Coins : Volume 1. The Panjab Government at The Clarendon Press, Oxford.
- Whitehead, Richard Bertram (1914). Catalogue of Coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore; Coins of Mughal Emperors: Volume 2. The Panjab Government at The Clarendon Press, Oxford.