Napier Museum

The Napier Museum in Thiruvananthapuram is one of the oldest museums in India, established in the mid-nineteenth century under the culturally ambitious Travancore royal house. Named after Lord Napier, Governor of Madras, the museum was rehoused from 1880 in a new building set in public gardens, and grew into a distinguished repository of the art, sculpture, ivory, temple art and decorative objects of Kerala and South India, celebrated as much for its architecture as for its holdings.

The museum's landmark building, opened in 1880, was designed by the architect Robert Chisholm in a distinctive Indo-Saracenic style with gabled roofs, ornamented gables and a striking polychrome interior, blending Kerala, Mughal, Chinese and Italian influences. Set within the Museum and Zoo gardens in the heart of the Kerala capital, it is regarded as one of India's most admired examples of nineteenth-century museum architecture and was designed with a natural ventilation system suited to the tropical climate.