The Hotel Heidelbach, built in 1906 by the banker Samuel Heidelbach, is a refined example of French, turn-of- the-century, Neo-Baroque architecture of which few authentic examples still exist. Purchased by the State in the 1950s, totally restored in 1991, the Hotel Heidelbach now houses the Japanese collections of Emile Guimet (1836-1918) a scholarly industrialist, a great traveler, a connoisseur of fine arts and music and lastly, the founder of the former National Museum of Religions. Outside of Japan, his collections, which include a replica of the famous Mandala of the Toll Temple in Kyoto (839 AD), have no equivalent in the world.