Pondicherry Museum

Two thousand years before the French. The Arikamedu gallery holds Roman Arretine pottery, red-glaze tableware from Arezzo, Italy, identifiable by potters' stamps pressed into the clay. Not a local imitation: direct imports. Plus amphorae, glass beads, coin hoards, physical proof that Roman merchants were trading on this coast in the first century BCE. And a rusted sword retrieved from a burial urn in Ousoudou village, fashioned like a Roman blade. 1,700 years before the French East India Company existed.

The bronzes. Cast in panchaloga (five-metal alloy) using the lost-wax technique, the Chola and Pallava figures in this gallery are of international calibre. Look for the Nataraja (Dancing Shiva) and the Umamaheswara and Thiripurasundari in tribhanga posture, from Sorakkudi. These were treasure troves found in the region; they ended up here.

The French galleries. Two rooms recreate the interiors of a White Town house (Drawing Chamber, Dining Room, Bedchamber) with Franco-Tamil hybrid furniture: French frames, Tamil carvings, local teak. In the bedchamber: a cot believed to have been used by Dupleix himself. In the first gallery: a replica of his chair, a hand-operated Gutenberg printing press from the Imprimerie du Gouvernement, and an issue of Vijaya, the first Tamil daily, edited by the poet Subramania Bharathi during his Pondicherry years.

The courtyard. A bullock-drawn coach from the descendants of Dewan Kanakaraya Mudaliar, the man who helped the French establish their settlement in 1674. And a pousse-pousse: a unique vehicle with mechanical steering operated by the passenger, pushed from behind and pulled by rope in front. Bharathi apparently loved it.