The Hussainabad Picture Gallery is a small but unmissable museum housed in a 1838 Nawabi pavilion overlooking the reservoir between the Chota Imambara and the Clock Tower. The collection consists almost entirely of life-size oil portraits of the Nawabs of Awadh — twelve of them — painted by European and Indian artists in the 19th century in a curious hybrid style that combines Mughal frontality with European chiaroscuro.
The portraits are arranged in order of succession; the dynasty's slow drift from Mughal court dress to half-European costume is the most striking thing about them, and reads as a quiet visual record of the Nawabs' political eclipse. The galleries are small — twenty minutes is enough — and the building itself is part of the experience.