Mysuru, the cultural capital of Karnataka, is now home to southern India’s first dolls museum, with more than 5,000 of them painstakingly collected from all over India.

The collection at the Kaladevi Dolls Museum, which stands opposite the Chamarajendra Zoo, includes dolls specially commissioned from traditional artisans from across India besides those designed at the Ramsons Kala Pratishtana

The Kaladevi Dolls Museum will add to the attractions of Mysuru when it celebrates this year’s 10-day Dasara festival with gusto, attracting tens of thousands of people every year.

One of the major attractions of the museum is the 500-odd dolls diorama, which is a replica of the 1939 Dasara Jamboo Savari procession that happened in Mysuru and which has been immortalised in 26 oil-on-canvas panels in the Mysuru Palace

Besides, visitors will be able to see dolls from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan, Kerala, and Bihar.

The Kaladevi Dolls Museum was inaugurated by Rajamata of the Mysuru Royal family, Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, on September 27 to coincide with World Tourism Day

The museum has been named after the late R Kaladevi, who was an avid collector of dolls. She collected miniatures from across the globe and a part of her collection forms the core of the museum.

“This is the first dolls museum coming up in the south of the Vindhyas,” says Raghu Dharmendra, curator of the Mysuru museum and artistic adviser to Ramson Kala Pratisthana.

So, if you live in or around Mysuru or have plans to travel to the region, you know exactly what's not to miss in the city this holiday season!