The Government Museum, Pudukkottai, India

India contains such a rich abundance of world-class museums that it might seem perverse to single out one of the smallest and least well known of the country's regional institutions. Despite its comparative obscurity, however, the Government Museum at Pudukkottai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is a place of pleasing and eccentric individuality – qualities which are so often lacking in impersonal big-city museums.