The Japanese garden

19, Avenue d’Iéna, 75116 Paris
Tel: +01 40 73 88 11
Open every day except Tuesday, from 9.45 a.m. until 17.45 p.m.
Admission free

In 1955, the Ministry of National Education acquired the former mansion of Alfred Heidelbach. Entirely restored in 1991, the building, now known as the “Galleries of the Buddhist Pantheon”, houses the Guimet Museum’s original collection, as conceived by the founder Émile Guimet (1836-1918) from a collection of works brought back from his travels in Japan in the company of the painter Félix Régamey, in 1876. The galleries present an exceptional, "iconic" selection of statues and idols, which were erected in the temples and private chapels.

Nearly 250 Japanese works, gathered by Émile Guimet and restored according to their original classification by Prof. Bernard Frank, reveal the breadth of Buddhist devotion, from doctrinal schools and popular beliefs, the oldest of which go right back to the times of Fujiwara and Kamakura (11th to the beginning of the 14th century).

Without parallel in the West or in the Far East, the Galleries of the Pantheon allow one to view and follow, in a magnificently well set out sequence, numerous pieces in lacquered and gilded wood and, on a lesser scale in bronze, the different "categories" of the "venerated", who are Six in number: Buddhas; bodhisattva (or beings dedicated to the Awakening), kings of magic science, gods and divinities from India, the syncretic venerated beings from ancient Japanese beliefs (Shinto) and Buddhism; and finally the statuettes and icons featuring the great Indian, Chinese and Japanese disciples and spiritual masters.

Thanks to Émile Guimet himself who commissioned it, a contemporary copy of the three dimensional large mandala from the Imperial temple Tôji of Kyoto, is once again on display to the public – just as it was at its first exhibition at the World Fair in Paris in 1878 – in the radiant and soothing plenitude of the cosmic “Great Sun” Buddha (Vairocana).

Works from Buddhist China are presented in context to the very abundant Japanese collection. These items, few in number, drawn from the Museum’s Chinese collection (part of which comes from the Asian Arts section of the Louvre), illustrate a number of great creative eras: the Six Dynasties (5th-6th centuries), the Tang (7th to the beginning of the 10th centuries) and the beginning of the Ming (15th century), the last of these by several great liturgical paintings destined to the Imperial Palace of Beijing (Peking).Thanks to the relationships between the images, the visitor can trace this evolution of sino-Buddhism transmitted to Japan.

The Galleries of the Buddhist Pantheon are completed by the Japanese Garden and the Tea Pavilion of exceptional quality, a gift from Japanese patrons. This place of serenity was especially created to be in keeping with all the rituals of the “tea ceremony”. A privileged space for nature and retreat, conducive to meditation, such would appear to us the wish created by Emile Guimet.