Guimet Museum, Paris

The Musée Guimet houses France's national collection of Asian art, founded by industrialist Émile Guimet who traveled extensively in Asia during the 1870s. Guimet established his museum in Lyon in 1879, but it moved to Paris in 1889, occupying a purpose-built structure designed by Jules Chatron. The museum originally focused on Asian religions, reflecting Guimet's fascination with Buddhism and Hinduism. Over time, the collection expanded to encompass Asian art broadly, from ancient sculpture to contemporary works.

The collection spans the entire Asian continent, with particularly strong holdings in Khmer sculpture from Cambodia, Chinese ceramics, and Japanese art. The museum owns one of the world's finest collections of Angkor-era sculpture outside Cambodia. Works range from intimate jade carvings to monumental Buddhist statuary. The Buddhist Pantheon rotunda displays religious sculptures from across Asia, showing how Buddhism adapted as it spread. A separate building houses the Japanese art collection. The museum's library contains over 100,000 volumes on Asian civilizations.