The Bihar Museum in Patna is the only Indian institution on the 2026 list of the world's 100 best and the only Asian one in the top 10 according to the connoisseurs at Worth a Journey.
The ninth ranking is worth noting as the museum finishes ahead of the most popular museums of the world, namely The Met where the world's fashionable elites are invited for the biggest charity event every year and the Louvre that has some of the most talked after art and gems on for display.
While the top five is roll-call of Europen and Latin American heavyweights: Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Antropologia, the Prado, Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Hermitage and Vienna's Kunsthistorisches, Patna seems to have crashed a rather exclusive dinner and been seated near the head of the table.
Opened in 2015, the Bihar Museum was conceived to give the treasures of the cramped old Patna Museum the room they deserved. Located on Patna's Bailey Road, the museum that houses remarkable collections of historical artefacts, sculptures, coins, manuscripts and folk art, is designed by Fumihiko Maki, the Pritzker-winning Japanese architect, working with Mumbai's Opolis Architects.
The museum is considered, unshowy piece of modernism and hold a collection that runs from antiquity to 1764, arranged chronologically from the Mauryans through the Mughals to the Sur Dynasty.
The undisputed star is the Didarganj Yakshi, a Mauryan-era sculpture of a woman, polished to a near-liquid sheen, unearthed near Patna in 1917 and long counted among the finest works of ancient Indian art. Nearby sit a Kushan-period slab depicting the Birth of Buddha, a Pala-dynasty bronze from Kurkihar, an illustrated manuscript of the Quran and a cache of Sur Dynasty coins.
There is a Children's Gallery too, and a Diaspora Gallery that follows Bihar's people far beyond its borders, a reminder that this was always a place that exported ideas.
The practicalities are refreshingly civilised. The galleries are open from 10am to 5pm, and the restaurant keeps going until 9pm. The museum is closed on Mondays. Tickets cost Rs 100 for Indian adults and Rs 500 for international visitors, which is less than a mediocre sandwich at most of the museums it has just overtaken.
A museum on Bailey Road, The Bihar Museum, has outranked the Louvre and the Met to be on the World's 100 Best Museums according to the travel guide Worth A Journey.