Indian Museum

Behind the long white colonnade on Chowringhee sits a museum opened in 1814 under the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It is India's oldest and largest, and one of the oldest anywhere. Thirty-five galleries hold over 100,000 objects: the carved Bharhut stupa railings, Gandhara sculpture, fossils, an Egyptian mummy of roughly four thousand years. The scale defeats a casual wander, so pick two or three galleries in advance and let the rest go. Closed Mondays; foreign visitors pay a higher ticket, and it can be booked online.

Four thousand years of the subcontinent, from Bharhut railings to an Egyptian mummy