Museum - Salar Jung, Hyderabad

Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad

Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad: A Simple White Building with Exquisite Artefacts

Location: Hyderabad, Telangana

Collection of antiques is something many of us have indulged in. But collecting artefacts from across the globe will just seem like a dream. One man who managed to fulfill this dream was Nawab Mir Yousuf Khan, popularly known as Salar Jung III. The Salar Jung Museum is a testament of his passion for arts and antiques. Located on the southern bank of Musi river in Hyderabad, this museum is known to be the largest one-man collection in the world and serves as a paradise for the connoisseurs of arts.

Established in the year 1951 at the resident palace of Salar Jung III, the museum was inaugurated by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. The Government of India took over the museum in 1958 and in 1961, the museum was declared to be of National Importance. Finally in the year 1968, the museum was shifted to its present location at Afzalgunj. The museum now has 38 galleries with three sections including the central block, the eastern block and the western block. It houses a wide collection of antiques with around 43,000 art objects, 47,000 books and 9,000 manuscripts from different parts of the world. Some of the artefacts are even centuries old.

Apart from the galleries, there is a Reading room, a Clock room and a Publication Counter in the museum. The Reading room has daily local newspapers and magazines for the readers. The Clock room displays an amazing collection of clocks right from the sundials to the modern timepieces. The publication counter has museum catalogues and picture postcards that are sold to the scholars. A cafeteria run by the Andhra Pradesh Tourism is also available at the museum.

Mir Yusuf Khan was a devout lover of artefacts and thus consecrated his entire life to the aggregation of valuable possessions from all over the world. With over ten lakh visitors annually, the Salar Jung Museum is an exquisite place to witness history at a glance. A visit to the Pearl city of Hyderabad is definitely incomplete without a visit to this incredible museum!

Timings: 10 am to 5 pm

Entry Fee: For Indians: Rs 10 (Adults)

Rs 5 (Children)

For Foreigners: Rs 150

Closed on Fridays as well as on Public Holidays

Address: 22-8-299-320, Salar Jung Road, Darulshifa, Hyderabad – 500002, Telangana 

Quick Tips:

• Deposit the luggage at the cloak room near the booking counter

• Do not carry objects like knives, scissors, blades, match boxes or lighters.

• Photography is not allowed inside the museum, therefore, deposit your cameras beforehand

• Do not touch the displayed objects

• Avoid usage of cell phones in the galleries

• Smoking is strictly prohibited

• Keep the surroundings clean

The ClockEdit

A bewildering variety and array of clocks greets the visitor in the clock room. 

There are ancient sundials in the form of obelisks to huge and modern clocks of the twentieth century. 

Others in the range vary from miniature clocks which need a magnifying glass to imbibe their beauty and complexity to stately grandfather clocks from as far away as France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Britain. 

A visual delight is the musical clock Salar Jung bought from Cook and Kelvey of England. Every hour, a timekeeper emerges from the upper deck of the clock to strike a gong as many times as it is the hours of the day.it is an antique.

The Salar Jung Museum possesses a good number of clocks collected from different European countries such as France, England, Switzerland, Germany, Holland etc. The variety includes the Bird cage clocks, Bracket clocks, Grandfather clocks, Skeleton clocks, etc. 

The museum is also having some good examples of the clocks of the contemporary period of Louis XV, Louis XVI, and Napoleon 1st of France. The most important clock which attracts the greatest number of visitors everyday is however, a British Bracket clock. 

It has got a mechanical device by which a miniature toy figure comes out of an enclosure and strikes the gong and then returns to the enclosure at each hour.

The Indian Parliament has declared the museum an Institution of National Importance.