The Guimet Museum was born from the great project of the industrialist, Emile Guimet (1836-1918), to create a museum of the religions of Egypt, classical antiquity and Asian countries. Travels in Egypt, Greece, then a world tour in 1876, with stages in Japan, China and India allowed him to gather important collections that he presented to Lyon from 1879. Reopened in January 2001 after four years of work, the Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet deploys its collections of Asian arts (India, Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Nepal and Tibet) which are among the richest people in the world.