Guimet Museum

The Guimet Museum stands as a massive monument to one man's singular obsession. In the late nineteenth century, a wealthy industrialist from Lyon named Emile Guimet traveled to Japan, China, and India to study Eastern religions. He returned to France with hundreds of statues, paintings, and books, and founded this institution in eighteen eighty-nine to house his growing collection of sacred artifacts. He viewed his project as a scientific endeavor, designing it to be a bridge between Western scholars and the complex spiritual traditions of the East.