Jaipur: Rain damages antiques at Albert Hall museum

JAIPUR: Heavy rainfall in Jaipur on August 14 (Friday) landed the basement of Albert Hall — Rajasthan’s oldest museum — and the office of the state archaeology museum department under five feet of water. This was the first time after the 1981 floods that the museum, situated at Ram Niwas Bagh, was inundated.
Rainwater damaged the files and antiquities present in the basement.The files were laid out on the museum’s floor to dry.
Rain nearly destroyed old documents, paintings, manuscripts and other art pieces
Director of state archaeology and museum department Prakash Sharma said, “Our office and basement of Albert Hall was in five feet of water. All our correspondence files are wet and will take time to dry, especially in this weather. None of our material of archaeological importance got wet in the rains and it was just routine files.”

There are thousands of exhibits on display from all over the world. Around 18,000 antiquities were in the basement of Albert Hall on August 14.
The antiques & objects in the basement have been left to dry
The Albert Hall superintendent Rakesh Chholak said that it would take months to assess the damage caused to antiquities.
Mud pumps had to be used to drain water out of the Albert Hall premises