Housed in an imposing red-brick Victorian building erected in 1906, the Peshawar Museum holds one of the world's finest collections of Gandharan Buddhist sculpture — the distinctive art produced in this region between the 1st and 5th centuries CE, when Greek artistic conventions inherited from Alexander's conquests fused with Buddhist iconography and Indian sensibility. The result is unlike anything else: Buddhas with Hellenic faces, friezes depicting the life of the prince Siddhartha in the same visual language as Roman imperial relief.
The Gandharan gallery is the reason to come. Beyond it, the museum has sections on calligraphy from the Islamic era, tribal arms and jewellery, and ethnographic displays on Pashtun and Kalash cultures.
The museum was looted and damaged during a bomb attack in 2010 but has been partially restored. Some galleries may be closed at any given time. Allow 90 minutes for a serious visit.