The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya or National Museum of Mankind is a unique museum, spread over 200 acres of undulating land on the Shamla hills on the upper lake front. It is situated in a pre-historic site and may be the only museum in the world strewn with numerous pre-historic painted rock shelters.

It is a post colonial museum of communities rather than objects. It is engaged in recollection rather than collection. The museum display has been curated directly by the folk and tribal communities, camping at site, to create a miniature presentation of Indian folk-ways through display of ecospecific habitations & subsistance practices in the tribal, coastal, desert, and Himalayan habitats.

The library, audio-visual archive, computerised documentation and the collection of ethnographic specimens in the museum, though modest in size are among the best in the world.