Buddhas of Bamiyan

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two colossal standing figures carved into a sandstone cliff in the central highlands between the fifth and sixth centuries, the largest such statues in the world and a monument to the region's role along the Buddhist Silk Road. Destroyed by dynamite in 2001, they left behind two vast empty niches in the rock face, surrounded by caves once adorned with wall paintings. The site remains part of a UNESCO-listed cultural landscape. The scale of the recesses still conveys the lost grandeur.