Tharoor hails Bihar Museum's top-10 global ranking
Synopsis
Congress MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor has celebrated the Bihar Museum in Patna being named one of the world's top ten museums by Munich-based travel publication WorthAJourney, placing the 2018 institution ahead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre.
Key Takeaways
The Bihar Museum in Patna has been ranked among the top ten museums in the world by WorthAJourney , a Munich-based travel publication.
The ranking places the Bihar Museum ahead of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (10th) and Paris's the Louvre .
Shashi Tharoor highlighted the ranking on 31 October 2026 , referencing his own earlier enthusiastic visit to the museum.
The Bihar Museum opened in 2018 and houses artefacts from the ancient Mauryan and Gupta periods, among other eras of Bihar's history.
The recognition is a boost for Bihar's heritage tourism sector and reflects a broader wave of investment in Indian state museums since the 2010s.
A museum in Patna has just leapfrogged two of the world's most celebrated cultural institutions — and Congress MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor could not be more thrilled about it. On Saturday, 31 October 2026, Tharoor took to X to celebrate the news that the Bihar Museum has been ranked among the top ten museums in the world by Munich-based travel publication WorthAJourney — placing the Patna institution ahead of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (ranked 10th) and Paris's the Louvre.
A Patna jewel outshines Manhattan and the Seine
The ranking by WorthAJourney, the Munich-based travel publication, is a striking result for a museum that only opened its doors in 2018. The Bihar Museum, situated in the state capital of Patna — the ancient city once known as Pataliputra, nerve-centre of the Mauryan and Gupta empires — houses artefacts spanning millennia of one of South Asia's most historically rich regions. That a relatively young Indian institution has climbed above the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre in an international travel ranking is, by any measure, a headline moment for Indian heritage tourism.
Tharoor's enthusiasm was not manufactured for the occasion. As he noted in his post, his earlier visit to the Bihar Museum — documented through 'many enthusiastic tweets' — already signalled his admiration for the institution. Today's post gave him the chance to say: the world has caught up.
Bihar Museum's rise and the new wave of Indian state museums
The Bihar Museum's ascent fits a broader pattern that has quietly been reshaping India's cultural landscape. Since the 2010s, several Indian states have invested in purpose-built, world-class museum infrastructure to bring their regional archaeological collections to a wider audience. The Bihar Museum is among the most ambitious of these projects — architecturally striking, thematically deep, and increasingly drawing international attention.
International rankings by travel publications carry real weight in the heritage-tourism economy. A placement above the Louvre and the Met is the kind of signal that redirects itineraries, reshapes perceptions, and sends a quiet but powerful message: India's cultural inheritance is not a footnote to the world's story — it is one of its central chapters.
For Bihar's tourism sector and its Department of Art, Culture and Youth Affairs, this ranking is an opportunity to convert global curiosity into footfall. Patna, long overshadowed by more prominent heritage circuits, now has a fresh and formidable calling card.
One MP's enthusiastic social-media visit report a year ago. A Munich travel journal's global top-ten list today. The Bihar Museum's moment has arrived — and the world is watching Patna.
Point of View
The narrative of 'world-class museums' has been anchored in Western Europe and North America; a Munich-based ranking that upends that hierarchy, however niche, carries symbolic weight that Indian diplomacy and soft-power strategy will quietly welcome. Tharoor's amplification of the news is politically astute as well: it frames the Congress MP as a consistent, credible voice on Indian heritage, a lane he has cultivated well beyond electoral cycles. The bigger question is whether Bihar's government can convert the ranking's momentum into sustained international footfall and domestic pride.
NationPress
31 Oct 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Bihar Museum and where is it located?
The Bihar Museum is a state-of-the-art cultural institution located in Patna , the capital of Bihar in eastern India. Opened in 2018 , it houses artefacts spanning Bihar's ancient history, including objects from the Mauryan and Gupta periods.
Which publication ranked the Bihar Museum in the top ten museums in the world?
WorthAJourney , a Munich-based travel publication, published the ranking that placed the Bihar Museum among the top ten museums in the world, ahead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre.
What rank did the Metropolitan Museum of Art get in the WorthAJourney list?
According to Tharoor's post citing the WorthAJourney ranking, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was placed 10th on the list.
Why did Shashi Tharoor post about the Bihar Museum?
Dr. Shashi Tharoor had previously visited the Bihar Museum and posted enthusiastically about it on X. He highlighted the new WorthAJourney global top-ten ranking on 31 October 2026 to celebrate the museum's international recognition.
What does the Bihar Museum ranking mean for India's heritage tourism?
The ranking positions Patna as a credible international heritage destination and reflects a broader pattern of Indian states building world-class museum infrastructure since the 2010s . It could significantly boost Bihar's profile in global travel itineraries.
