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Long before it became Hyderabad's go-to excursion destination, the iconic collection of the Salar Jung Museum lived inside Dewan Deodi. This was the ancestral palace of the royal Salar Jung family of Hyderabad's Old City. The palace dazzled visitors with glittering chandeliers, cavernous halls and the famed Aina Khana (Hall of Mirrors), where European glassware and decorative arts sparkled. Today, it only survives in old photographs and memories.
This year, the Salar Jung museum celebrates its 75th anniversary, marking not just one of India's greatest museums, but also the spectacular palace that first housed its collection.
The platinum jubilee celebrations are expected to feature exhibitions, lectures, cultural programmes and scholarly conferences. Meanwhile, ambitious modernisation plans are also on the table, including upgraded galleries, conservation facilities and world-class visitor amenities.
The museum's history
The museum owes much of its existence to Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, better known as Salar Jung III. After a brief stint as Prime Minister of the princely Hyderabad State, Jung the Third stepped away from politics in 1914 to swap governance for a far more expensive hobby: collecting absolutely everything.
Persian manuscripts, furniture, weapons, clocks and European sculptures from around the world, all of it. What helped was a network of agents and dealers sourcing objects from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
By the time he died in 1949, Jung III had amassed so many treasures that turning them into a public museum felt almost inevitable. Finally, in 1951, the museum opened to the public inside the family's ancestral palace before moving to its current home on the banks of the Musi River in 1968.
That said, the museum wasn't solely the work of one obsessive collector. Several generations of the Salar Jung family contributed to the collection. One of its most celebrated masterpieces, the ethereal Veiled Rebecca, was actually acquired by Salar Jung I, and not Salar Jung III.
What's the collection like?
What keeps visitors returning isn't just the scale of the collection, but also its sheer unpredictability. While the obvious crowd-puller is Veiled Rebecca with its seemingly translucent veil carved from solid marble, the museum's 40 galleries house an equally astonishing collection.
Take, for instance, the jade daggers linked to Mughal royalty, including pieces associated with Nur Jahan and Shah Jahan. Or the French furniture, Japanese lacquerware, Chinese porcelain, Persian carpets and European paintings. Cannot forget to mention the rare Persian and Arabic manuscripts, Deccani literary works and related artefacts from the Mughal era.
Last but not least is another star of the show: the Musical Clock. Every hour, visitors gather around the beloved timepiece to watch a tiny mechanical figure emerge and strike the bell. It's a performance lasts only for a few moments, yet is worth counting the minutes for.
If you walk in thinking, 'I'll be done in an hour', and emerge three hours later intellectually invested in 18th-century French ceramics, blame the Salar Jungs for it.
Opening hours: Sat-Thurs. 10am-6pm.
Address: Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad 500002, Telangana state