Found­ed in 1915 by the cole FranAaise d’ExtrA?me Ori­ent, it hous­es a col­lec­tion of stone sculp­tures from the Hin­­du-prac­tic­ing Cham civ­i­liza­tion, which occu­pied much of cen­tral Viet­nam in the first mil­len­ni­um CE through about the 14th cen­tu­ry. The muse­um can be toured in about an hour. The sculp­tures are near­ly all made of sand­stone, and some have weath­ered bad­ly over the cen­turies, but you can still appre­ci­ate the delight­ful artis­tic qual­i­ty of the fig­ures, which include shi­va, garu­das, nagas, lions, mon­keys, and ele­phants. The col­lec­tion also includes strik­ing exam­ples of the ancient Hin­du icons of fer­til­i­ty: lingam altars dec­o­rat­ed around the sides with rows of breasts. The sculp­tures were most­ly removed from the facades or inte­ri­ors of Cham ruins (which would have been loot­ed oth­er­wise.) The ruins them­selves, such as near­by My Son, now tend to be crum­bling piles of bricks and some­what dis­ap­point­ing, giv­ing lit­tle sense of the spec­tac­u­lar art­work pro­duced by the Cham civ­i­liza­tion. Any vis­it to My Son should be paired with a vis­it to the Cham Muse­um. The col­lec­tion is also inter­est­ing to com­pare with Bali­nese sculp­ture and the ear­ly, Hin­du phase of Angkor Wat in Cam­bo­dia.