The National Museum of Oriental Art is an important museum dedicated to the arts of the Orient, from the Middle East to Japan.

In particular, the museum has a notable collection of artifacts from the Gandhara area. This is due the archaeological missions of the Italian Institute for Middle and Far East (IsMEO) to the Buddhist and protohistoric sites of Swat, namely the Butkara Stupa, Barikot, Panr, Aligrama among others. Other collections include items from the Palace of Mas’ud III and the Buddhist shrine of Tape Sardar at Ghazni, Afghanistan, the prehistoric city of Shahr-e Sokhteh, in eastern Iran, and the art objects from Nepal, Tibet and Ladakh collected by Giuseppe Tucci on his travels in 1928-1948.