The Khmer galleries
Angkor's stone smiles and naga heads in the largest collection outside Cambodia — Asian sculpture's summit in central Paris.
Lionel Allorge — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra — CC BY 2.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra — CC BY 2.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra — CC BY 2.0
Complements, not competitors: Guimet for Asia's great classical civilisations in archaeological depth, Branly for Africa, Oceania and the Americas in theatrical display — choose by the continent calling you.
The Khmer floor, the Gandhara Buddhas, straight up to the Himalayan wing, closing in the Japanese rotunda — the collection's spiritual spine in one concentrated visit.
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One of the greatest Asian-arts museums on earth stands quietly on Place d'Iéna between Trocadéro and the Champs-Élysées: the Guimet, sixty thousand works spanning Afghanistan to Japan across five millennia — Khmer sculpture from Angkor in the largest collection outside Cambodia, Chinese ritual bronzes from 3000 BC, Mughal miniatures, and the Gandhara Buddhas where Asia meets the Greeks. The route ascends almost deliberately toward the spirit: you begin with Southeast Asia's stone Angkor smiles on the ground floor and end high in the Himalayan wing among Buddhist thangkas — and in the upper Japanese rotunda, a tea pause overlooks Paris from an angle nobody knows. For anyone worn down by the great museums' crowds, the Guimet is the antidote: a Louvre-grade collection with neighbourhood-library crowds — and with the Maison de la Culture du Japon and Palais de Tokyo nearby, Paris's "Asia line" completes in a single afternoon.
Angkor's stone smiles and naga heads in the largest collection outside Cambodia — Asian sculpture's summit in central Paris.
Tripod vessels from Chinese civilisation's dawn, their beast-masks intact — five thousand years gazing back through the glass.
Behind the annexe Buddhist Pantheon hides a free Japanese tea garden — among the quietest, least-discovered corners in all Paris.
Place d'Iéna, 75116 Paris