Lahore Museum

Start on the pavement of The Mall. Traffic hums behind you: rickshaws, motorbikes, the steady horns of Lahore. In front of you rises a long building of warm red brick, with white trim, arched windows and small domes along the roofline. In the late afternoon the brick turns almost copper. Before you go inside, notice the great bronze cannon on its plinth in the middle of the road. That gun and this building share one of the best-known opening scenes in English literature.

This is the Lahore Museum, one of the oldest museums in South Asia. Its story begins in the 1860s. After a large exhibition of Punjab's crafts and products, the organisers kept a collection and opened it to the public in 1865. At first the objects sat in a simpler hall nearby. The building you see now came later. It opened in 1894, built to give the growing collection a permanent home on the city's grandest avenue.

Look closely at the style. Architects of that era called it Indo-Saracenic — a blend of Mughal domes and arches with British Victorian planning. The design is linked to Sir Ganga Ram, the engineer often called the father of modern Lahore. Many of the city's colonial-era buildings carry his mark. Here the red brick, the carved details and the rows of arches echo older Mughal monuments, but the long galleries inside follow the logic of a Victorian museum.

Now the first surprise. In the late nineteenth century, the curator here was John Lockwood Kipling. He was an artist and teacher, and he also ran the art school across the road. His son was Rudyard Kipling. In the novel Kim, published in 1901, the boy hero sits astride the great cannon outside a building the locals call the Wonder House. That Wonder House is this museum. The kindly curator in the book is a portrait of Rudyard's own father.

The cannon itself is known as Zamzama. It was cast in the eighteenth century, during the wars that swept across Punjab. Over the following decades it passed between rival powers, and whoever held it seemed to hold Lahore. People came to call it Kim's Gun because of the novel. Today it stands quietly, a little green with age, while the city flows around it on both sides.

Step inside, and the temperature drops. The noise of The Mall fades behind thick walls. The galleries are high and long, with light falling from tall windows onto glass cases. You will hear footsteps on stone, the low murmur of school groups, and sometimes the soft whirr of ceiling fans. The museum does not rush you. It feels like a series of rooms, each one opening onto another century.

The heart of the collection, for many visitors, is the Gandhara gallery. Gandhara was an ancient region in what is now northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Around two thousand years ago, its sculptors mixed Greek, Persian and Indian ideas. They carved the Buddha in grey stone, with wavy hair and flowing robes that look almost Greek. Panels here show scenes from the Buddha's life: his birth, his teaching, his death. Many are small enough to study at arm's length.

The most famous piece in that gallery is the Fasting Buddha. It shows the Buddha during a long period of self-denial, before his enlightenment. The figure is seated, and every rib shows through the skin. The veins stand out on his arms. His eyes are sunk deep in his face. Yet the expression stays calm. Many people stand in front of this small statue longer than anywhere else in the building. It is worth your time.

The museum also reaches much further back. Cases hold objects from the Indus Valley civilisation, one of the world's earliest urban cultures. Look for the tiny stone seals, carved with animals and a script that no one has yet fully deciphered. These came from sites such as Harappa, not far from Lahore. People sealed goods with them more than four thousand years ago. They are small enough to sit on a fingertip.

Other galleries move through the centuries closer to our own. There are Mughal and Sikh-era objects: arms and armour, textiles, carved wood and manuscripts. There is a large collection of coins from many dynasties. There are miniature paintings, with detail so fine that some artists used brushes made of a few hairs. Lean in close, and you can see individual leaves on a tree, or the pattern on a single sleeve.

Here is the second surprise, and it is above your head. In one hall, look up at the ceiling. The Pakistani artist Sadequain painted a large mural there in the twentieth century. He was famous for his bold lines and calligraphy. His ceiling shows human figures and ideas on a grand scale. Many visitors walk right underneath it without ever raising their eyes. Take a moment, tilt your head back, and follow the shapes across the surface.

The museum's surroundings tell their own story. Across The Mall stands the National College of Arts, the school that Lockwood Kipling once led. Nearby are old university buildings and Tollinton Market, from the early days of the collection. This stretch of road was the showpiece of colonial Lahore. Today students, office workers and families share it. Painters and sculptors from the art college still pass the cannon every day on their way to class.

If you have time, sit for a while in a quiet gallery. Watch who else is here. You may see a grandmother pointing out a manuscript to a child, or art students sketching a statue. For many Lahoris this is not only a tourist site. It is a place of school trips, first dates and rainy-afternoon wanderings. The objects are old, but the building is still very much in use.

When you step back outside, the heat and noise will return all at once. Pause on the steps for a moment. Look again at the red brick, the domes, and the green bronze of Zamzama in the road. Picture a barefoot boy climbing onto that cannon more than a century ago, in the pages of a book. Then let the traffic of The Mall carry you back into the living city.