The Kizil Caves, carved into the red sandstone cliffs above the Muzat River 65 kilometres west of Kuqa, are the oldest Buddhist cave temples in China and one of the most important sites of early Buddhist art in the world. More than 230 chambers were cut into the cliffs between roughly the 3rd and 8th centuries AD, when Kucha was a powerful Buddhist kingdom on the northern Silk Road. The frescoes inside — Buddhas, bodhisattvas, musicians, hunting scenes, geometric patterns, and the jataka tales of the Buddha's previous lives — represent a style found nowhere else: Central Asian in flavour, drawing on Indian Buddhist iconography but processed through a Tocharian sensibility that is neither Chinese nor Indian.
The caves that are accessible to visitors are a fraction of the total number, and many of the finest murals were cut from the walls by early 20th-century German expeditions and taken to Berlin, where some were subsequently destroyed in the Second World War. What remains is still extraordinary. The paintings that survived in the caves have faded and suffered water damage, but their colour and detail are still visible: jewelled headdresses, musicians playing instruments you can identify as antecedents of modern forms, faces of a type — large eyes, high cheekbones — that belongs to a vanished people.
The entrance fee includes a guide who opens the individual cave locks; without the guide you can enter only the general site. Photography inside most caves is prohibited, which is enforced strictly. The gorge setting is beautiful in its own right — red cliffs rising from a clear river, with poplars along the bank in autumn.