This Museum was officially opened in 1868 and became known as Gedung Gajah (Elephant House) or Gedung Arca (House of Statues). It was called Gedung Gajah on account of the bronze elephant statue in the front yard donated by King Chulalongkorn from Thailand in 1871. (You can see the statue in this picture) It was also called Gedung Arca because a great variety of statues from different periods are on display in the house.

Currently the Musium Nasional houses collections of 109,342 objects under the categories of prehistory, archaeology, ethnography, numismatics-heraldic, geography and historical relics.

For more information, refer to http://www.museumnasional.org/