Bharat Kala Bhavan

A university museum in the calm of the BHU campus, founded in 1920 and holding more than 100,000 objects: Mughal and Pahari miniatures, Gupta- and Kushan-era stone, textiles, coins, manuscripts. Two rooms give it a particular character: Himalayan canvases by Nicholas Roerich, and the work of Alice Boner, the Swiss artist and scholar who spent decades living in Varanasi. Give the miniature and sculpture halls an unhurried hour. Open Monday to Saturday, roughly 10:30 to 16:30, with shorter hours in May and June, and closed on Sundays and national holidays.

Roerich's Himalayas and Gupta stone in one quiet campus museum, worth an unhurried hour