Taxila
UNESCO World Heritage Site (1980) Taxila; Gandharan City And Buddhist Monastery Ruins Spanning Roughly A Thousand Years · Taxila, Punjab
Taxila was one of the great cities of the ancient world, a crossroads on the route between Central Asia and India where Persian, Greek, Mauryan, Scythian, Parthian and Kushan rulers followed one another for roughly a thousand years. Alexander the Great passed through in 326 BCE, and the city is remembered in South Asia as a centre of learning. What visitors see is a spread of sites across a green valley: the Bhir Mound, the oldest city; Sirkap, a grid-planned Indo-Greek town with the Double-Headed Eagle stupa on its main street; the great Dharmarajika stupa, said to hold relics of the Buddha; and the hilltop monastery of Jaulian, where stucco Buddhas still sit in their niches. The Taxila Museum holds one of the finest collections of Gandharan sculpture anywhere, where Greek and Buddhist art met and produced some of the first images of the Buddha in human form. The sites are spread out, so a car and a full day are needed; it is under an hour from Islamabad.
Taxila Museum and archaeological sites, Taxila, Rawalpindi District, Taxila, Punjab, Pakistan
The Taxila Museum and the main sites open daily in daytime hours, with seasonal changes and possible closures on some public holidays; confirm locally. Each site and the museum have their own tickets, with a much higher foreigners' rate than the local one. The sites are several kilometres apart, so a car and driver are the practical way round. Taxila is under an hour from Islamabad by road.