Taxila: where the Gandhara world kept its books

A short history

The city was founded around 1000 BCE and became a capital of the Gandhara civilisation, sitting on the junction between South and Central Asia. Darius I took it for the Achaemenids around 516 BCE.

Alexander arrived in 326 BCE and the local king, whom the Greeks called Taxiles, surrendered without a fight. The Mauryans held it within a decade of Alexander's departure, and Ashoka served as its governor before becoming emperor. Indo-Greek rulers followed in the second century BCE, and the Kushans by 76 CE — Kanishka founded the third city, Sirsukh.

Taxila's reputation as a seat of learning is old and genuinely debated. Whether it was a university in the modern sense, or a concentration of individual teachers taking students, is not settled. Either way, people came here to study for centuries.

It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.

Places worth your time

Sirkap

The Indo-Greek city from the second century BCE, laid out on a grid. The clearest sense you will get of what it was like to live here.

Dharmarajika Stupa

Mauryan-era, large, and surrounded by the remains of the monastery that served it.

Jaulian monastery

On a hill, with monastic cells and stupa bases still standing to head height. The best preserved of the group.

Mohra Muradu

Quieter than Jaulian, with a beautifully intact votive stupa in the assembly hall.

Taxila Museum

One of the most complete collections of Gandharan stone sculpture anywhere, from the first to the seventh centuries. Start here.

Bhir Mound

The oldest of the three cities, sixth century BCE, and the least visually rewarding — but it is where the sequence begins.

Before you go

October to March. Half an hour from Islamabad, which makes it an easy day trip on either end of a northern journey. Take the museum first, then the sites.