Takht-i-Bahi is one of Pakistan’s best-preserved Buddhist monastic complexes. Founded in the early first century AD, it occupies a series of hilltops near Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its elevated setting helped protect the buildings after abandonment, leaving courts, cells, passages and assembly spaces that make monastic organization unusually legible.
UNESCO inscribed Takht-i-Bahi together with the neighbouring fortified settlement of Sahr-i-Bahlol in 1980. The two components belong to the same World Heritage property but are about five kilometres apart. A visit to the monastery alone does not encompass the whole inscription.