A country · 27 places · 8 regions

Afghanistan, all of it.

27 curated places across 8 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.

Minarets of Ghazni · via Wikimedia Commons

The 4 biggest regions — Kabul Province, Bamyan Province, Herat Province and Balkh Province — read below as chapters, with 4 more waiting past them.

Chapter I · Kabul Province · 8 places

Kabul Province

The National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul holds one of the most significant archaeological collections in the region, spanning the country's role as a crossroads of ancient civilisations from Greek and Buddhist to Islamic times. Long famed for the golden treasures of Bactria and the sculptures of Gandhara, the museum suffered devastating looting and destruction during years of war before painstaking recovery of surviving pieces. Its galleries trace millennia of art along routes linking India, Persia and Central Asia.

National Museum of Afghanistan

Kabul Province, Afghanistan

✦ April–June, September–October · $

Id Gah Mosque

Kabul Province, Afghanistan

✦ April–June, September–October · $

Kabul Zoo

Kabul Province, Afghanistan

✦ April–June, September–October · $

All 8 places in Kabul Province →

via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter II · Bamyan Province · 3 places

Bamyan Province

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.

✦ May–September · $

Meet Buddhas of Bamiyan All 3 places in Bamyan Province →

Chapter III · Herat Province · 3 places

Herat Province

The Musalla Complex of Herat is the ruined remnant of a magnificent religious and educational ensemble built under the Timurid queen Gawhar Shad in the fifteenth century, when Herat was a renowned centre of art and learning. Several tall minarets, leaning and weathered, still rise above the plain, together with the domed mausoleum of the queen, their surfaces bearing traces of once-lavish tilework. War, earthquakes and deliberate demolition reduced the rest. Even in ruin the towers convey the ambition of the Timurid renaissance.

Musalla Complex of Herat

Herat Province, Afghanistan

✦ April–June, September–October · $

Herat Citadel

Herat Province, Afghanistan

✦ March to May

Great Mosque of Herat

Herat Province, Afghanistan

✦ March to May

All 3 places in Herat Province →

via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter IV · Balkh Province · 2 places

Balkh Province

An ancient city near Mazar-i-Sharif once known as the Mother of Cities, a great centre of trade and religion on the Silk Road. Its crumbling walls and shrines recall a long and layered history.

✦ April to June · $

Meet Balkh All 2 places in Balkh Province →