Musée Guimet (National Museum of Asian Arts), Paris

The Musée Guimet, officially the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques, is France's national museum of Asian art at 6 Place d'Iéna in Paris's 16th arrondissement. It holds one of the largest collections of Asian art outside Asia, from Afghanistan to Japan, and suits anyone interested in Buddhist sculpture, Khmer art or Chinese ceramics.

Émile Guimet's collection, from Lyon to Paris

Émile Guimet, an industrialist and traveller from Lyon with a strong interest in the religions of Asia, first showed his collection in Lyon from 1879. Ten years later the museum moved to Paris and was inaugurated in 1889. Its facade, roofs and library rotunda were listed as historic monuments in 1979. The museum took its present shape in 1945, when the Louvre transferred its Asian collections, including Ernest Grandidier's ceramics, to Guimet, which in return gave its Egyptian archaeology to the Louvre. A full restructuring by Henri and Bruno Gaudin was completed in 2001.

Gandhara, Chola bronzes and Khmer Angkor

The Afghanistan and Pakistan galleries show Buddhist sculpture from Gandhara and the stuccoes of Hadda. Indian art includes Chola-period bronzes. The ground-floor Southeast Asian rooms are dominated by Khmer statuary and architectural decoration from Angkor, one of the most important collections of its kind outside Cambodia.

Chinese holdings run from early bronzes and Tang dynasty works to porcelain, including a glazed luohan from Yixian. Japanese and Korean art complete the upper floors.

Korean trompe-l'œil and DAL DARI

The exhibition Knowledge in trompe-l'œil, Korea (18th to 20th century), runs from 16 September 2026 to 4 January 2027. A monumental installation, DAL DARI, The Moon and its Legs, is on show from 6 June 2026 to 8 February 2027. The museum's two other sites, the Hôtel d'Heidelbach (19 Avenue d'Iéna, with its Japanese garden) and the Musée d'Ennery (59 Avenue Foch), are closed.