The spectacular entrance to the Lahore museum
Suitably rejuvenated in body and soul, I ventured out of my 5-star bubble and into the real Lahore. First stop the Lahore Museum. The museum building is a fabulous piece of architecture constructed in its distinctive red brick with a white marble portico. Inside, the museum itself is a monument to faded grandeur. Most of the exhibit rooms were closed off while major, and much needed, renovations are carried out. This left only a small selection of exhibit rooms open for display. And what a disjointed selection they were. One room was dedicated to an odd collection of Buddhist artefacts from as far afield as Burma, while another resembled a B-grade art gallery from the 1960’s. Yet another was a peculiar collection of ceramic figurines. Another contained fabulous examples of Islamic calligraphy – some dating back to the 10th and 12th century. For me, however, the best was the prehistoric and ancient civilisations room. This contained examples of stone axes and clubs dating from 300,000BCE. There were also extensive displays of the Mohenjo-daro civilisation and the Ghandaran civilisation – one of the first major Buddhist empires.
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