Pondicherry Museum

The Pondicherry Museum in the French Quarter holds Chola bronzes and finds from the Arikamedu trading port. Timings and fees below come from a secondary source.

The Pondicherry Museum is an art and history museum in the French Quarter of Puducherry. Wikipedia notes that it holds 81 Chola bronze sculptures, among the largest collections of Chola lost-wax castings, and that it houses material from Arikamedu, the Yavana trading port just north of modern Pondicherry that was active from the late first century BCE to the first and second centuries CE.

Photographs on Wikimedia Commons show stone sculpture such as Nandi, a Jyestha Devi image from around the ninth century and other temple statuary, as well as a gallery recreating the house of Ananda Ranga Pillai. Timings and fees in this entry come from a tour-operator blog (Veena World), not an official museum page: it lists 9 am to 6:30 pm, closed on Mondays and national holidays, with Rs 10 for Indian adults, Rs 50 for foreign nationals and Rs 5 for children.

These are marked as needing verification. The museum is a good first stop before visiting the Arikamedu site, since it displays finds from there, and it is a short walk from the Promenade, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Manakula Vinayagar Temple.