Indian Garden Pavilion at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

One of the top ten comprehensive art museums in the nation, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection features 5000 years of creative achievements.

VMFA is open 365 days a year and general admission is always free.

This elegant arcaded pavilion, lacking its superstructure, was probably created in the 19th century for a royal garden or palace complex in Rajasthan's princely state of Bharatpur. The white marble used for its construction is quite varied.

The undersides of some pieces indicate that they were recycled from previous buildings, and the structure has been repaired several times. When acquired by the museum, the 27-ton object was in nearly a thousand pieces, many of them badly broken.

Conservators worked for nearly four years to repair and reassemble sections of the pavilion.

In the final step of this process, captured in the accompanying video filmed over the course of several months, these sections were re-erected to form the centerpiece of VMFA's new South Asian galleries.