Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet

The Musee Guimet began as a personal obsession of Emile Guimet, a wealthy industrialist from Lyon who made his fortune from a vibrant blue synthetic dye. During a global tour in eighteen seventy six, he traveled across Japan, China, and India to study Eastern religions. He filled his personal collection with hundreds of statues, paintings, and sacred objects, driven by a desire to bring the spiritual practices of the East to a French public. He initially opened a museum for these artifacts in his hometown of Lyon, but later moved the entire institution to this building in Paris, which opened its doors in eighteen eighty nine, the same year as the Eiffel Tower.