Bihar Museum

Modern state museum holding the polished sandstone Didarganj Yakshi and the best Mauryan sculpture in India

Opened in 2015, the Bihar Museum is an exception in Patna: a calm, well-lit, well-curated modern building on Bailey Road. The collection runs from prehistoric tools through the Mauryan and Gupta empires to the modern day. Most visitors come for the Didarganj Yakshi, but the bronze Buddhas from Nalanda and the terracotta Sunga figurines are nearly as good.

The building was designed by the Japanese firm Maki and Associates and uses inner courtyards and clerestory light to good effect. There is a children's gallery, a cafe, and a museum shop. Allow at least two hours. The Bihar Museum effectively replaced the older Patna Museum as the main destination, though both are worth visiting if you have time.

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The museum's centrepiece is the Didarganj Yakshi, a life-size female figure carved from polished Chunar sandstone around the third century BCE. It was found by a villager washing clothes on the Ganges bank in 1917, half-buried in the mud, and is now considered one of the supreme masterpieces of ancient Indian sculpture.

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