Birla Museum

This museum is part of the Birla Mandir complex which holds a Lakshmi Narayan Temple and a shrine to Shiva-Parvati. This is one of about 14 temples built by the Birla families at different places and was built to fill a void as Bhopal did not have many temples. Like most of the other modern temples built by the Birlas, the Birla Mandir is magnificently constructed and brightly painted. The temple complex is worth visiting for its location at Arera Hills offering a panoramic view of the Lower Lake. From here you can see Bhopal stretching from minarets of the old city to the modern areas around the lakes.
The Birla Museum houses a small but selective display of fine stone sculpture, informatively displayed with explanatory panels in English in the main galleries, most of them seventh to 12th century statues. The sculptures show Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti. Especially impressive are the Varaha Avatar in the Vishnu Gallery which has good works showing Lord Vishnu and his avatars, the Devi gallery with various goddesses including a superb Chamunda, finely carved voluptuous apsaras and fertility figures, and the Shiva Gallery with some beautifully carved reliefs of Uma-Maheshwar on Mount Kailash. It also has a good selection of archaeological finds from excavations.