SPS Museum

The Shri Pratap Singh Museum, generally called the SPS Museum, is in Wazir Bagh, Srinagar. The idea dates to 1889, when Amar Singh, an officer in the British Indian Army, and the scholar S.H. Godmerry sent a memorandum to Maharaja Pratap Singh, Amar Singh's elder brother. The ruler approved, a state-owned building near the Jhelum was chosen, and the archaeologist John Marshall supervised the founding. The doors opened in 1898 with a first collection drawn from the Maharaja's palace treasury, and the first president, Accountant General Blerjee, was also given the task of cataloguing a big coin collection the museum acquired.

The holdings have since passed 80,000 objects. After Daya Ram Sahni reorganised the museum in 1913, finds from excavations at Pandrethan, Parihaspora and Avantipura came in, and private collectors later gave many household pieces. In 2017 a second building, designed to withstand fire and earthquakes, was finished to house some of the most popular exhibits, while the original 19th-century building is still in use.