About
Lahore Museum is Pakistan’s oldest and largest museum, with a collection that traces the cultural history of the region from antiquity to the present. Established in 1865 and housed in its present building on The Mall since 1894, the museum is itself a major landmark of Lahore. Its red-brick Indo-Saracenic architecture reflects the period in which it was built, combining Mughal-inspired forms with colonial design.
The museum’s collection includes archaeological material from the Indus Valley and Gandhara, Buddhist sculpture, Islamic decorative arts, miniature paintings, manuscripts, coins, textiles, arms, ethnographic objects, and works from the colonial and modern periods. Its galleries bring together objects connected to Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Islamic, and regional histories, making it one of the few places where the many layers of Pakistan’s cultural past can be seen side by side.
The museum also has an important collection of modern Pakistani art, with works by artists including Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Ustad Allah Bakhsh, Sadequain, Shakir Ali, Zubeida Agha, and many others. For students, researchers, and general visitors, Lahore Museum remains a key resource for understanding the art, material culture, and social history of Punjab and the wider region.
