Government Museum, ChennaiGovernment Museum, Chennai (Egmore)

The Government Museum in Egmore was founded in 1851, making it the second-oldest museum in India after Calcutta's Indian Museum. The 16-acre complex holds six separate collections under one ticket: Archaeology, Bronzes, Anthropology, Botany, Zoology, and the Children's Museum. The standout galleries — and the reason serious visitors come — are the Bronze Gallery and the Amaravati Gallery. The Bronze Gallery holds the world's finest collection of South Indian bronzes, with around 500 pieces dating from the 8th to the 18th century. The Chola-period Nataraja (10th–11th century) — Shiva as Lord of the Dance — is the gallery's centrepiece, copies of which sit in physics labs around the world (a CERN replica was donated in 2004 to symbolise the dance of subatomic particles). The Amaravati Gallery holds the limestone reliefs from the great Buddhist stupa at Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh) — second-century BCE work that rivals Sanchi. The Connemara Public Library (in the same complex) is itself architecturally important — a Henry Irwin Indo-Saracenic gem from 1896. Allow at least three hours.