Taxila

Taxila is an ancient city in Pakistan, just 30kms north of Islamabad.

Taxila is one of the most important archaeological sites in Pakistan and the world. 18 of its sites are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The city dates back to the Ancient Gandhāran city of Takshashila (also Takkasila or Taxila) an important Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist center of learning from the 6th century BC to the 5th century CE. This is the region from where Buddhism travelled to the far east - and Persians, Greeks under Alexander the Great, Central Asians and Hindus all subsequently left their mark. You can watch the sun set from the remains of a Buddhist monastery or wander through the streets of an excavated Persian city in the knowledge that there are two older ones buried below. Today, Taxila is the center of Pakistan's engineering industry.

Historically, Takṣaśilā lay at the crossroads of three major trade routes:
1.The uttarāpatha, the northern road—the later Grand Trunk Road or GT Road—the royal road which connected Gandhara in the west to the kingdom of Magadha and its capital Pāṭaliputra in the valley of the Ganges in the east.
2.The northwestern route through Bactria, Kāpiśa, and Puṣkalāvatī.
3.The Sindu (English: Indus River) route from Kashmir and Central Asia, via Srinagar, Mansehra, and the Haripur valley across the Khunjerab pass to the Silk Road in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south. The Khunjerab passes between Kashmir and Xinjiang—the current Karakoram highway—and was traversed in antiquity.

Taxila is home to a vast network of ancient ruins, connected by road. Unfortunately, the museum there is quite small and without much information aside from a brief timeline. You should read about the site before you go, as the museum won't tell you very much. There are no dioramas or reconstructions of what the sites looked like, so you'll need to use your imagination.

The main ruins of Taxila are divided into three major cities, each belonging to a distinct time period. The oldest of these is the Hathial area, which yielded surface shards similar to burnished red wares (or 'soapy red wares') recovered from early phases at Charsadda, and may date between the 6th century BCE and the late 2nd millennium BCE. Bhir Mound dates from the 6th century BCE. The second city of Taxila is located at Sirkap and was built by Greco-Bactrian kings in the 2nd century BCE. The third and last city of Taxila is at Sirsukh and relates to the Kushan kings.

In addition to the ruins of the city, a number of buddhist monasteries and stupas also belong to the Taxila area. Some of the important ruins of this category include the ruins of the stupa at Dharmarajika, built by Maurya emperor Ashoka, where according to local custom bone and tooth fragments from the Buddha were buried, and where a Greek-style statue of Aphrodite was unearthed. There is also the monastery at Jaulian, the monastery at Mohra Muradu in addition to a number of stupas.