State Museum, Bhopal

The State Museum in Bhopal, on Shyamala Hills, is the flagship museum of Madhya Pradesh. Founded in 1964, it moved in 2005 into its present building, a contemporary design with wide ramped spaces planned to make the most of natural light. It opens from Tuesday to Sunday.

Seventeen themed galleries cover miniature painting, sculpture and bronzes, inscriptions, fossils and prehistory, excavated finds, manuscripts, coins, stamps, rare musical instruments, costumes, weapons, royal collections from the princely states and the freedom movement. Much of the sculpture dates from the 8th to 12th centuries, and older pieces include a black granite Buddha and Yakshini figures of about 200 BC. Among the highlights are nine reproductions of the Buddhist murals of the Bagh Caves, some of whose originals have been lost, 84 rare 12th-century Jain bronzes from Dhar district, miniatures showing scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and a Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp, issued in 1840.