About the Museum

The Bangladesh National Museum is the national repository of Bangladesh's cultural and historical artifacts, located in the Shahbag area of Dhaka. It was established on March 20, 1913, under the name Dhaka Museum, and was formally inaugurated on August 7, 1913. With an initial collection of 379 objects, it was opened to the public on August 25, 1914. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the institution was reorganized under the name Bangladesh National Museum, incorporating various parts of the former Dhaka Museum, and was formally inaugurated in its present form in 1983. The museum has departments of ethnography and decorative art, history and classical art, natural history, and world civilization. Artifacts from the prehistoric era to contemporary history are displayed here, which include over 50,000 ancient and medieval coins, Buddhist sculptures from the Gandhara period, and exhibitions related to the 1971 Liberation War.