The ruined Sogdian city — "old Panjakent" — sits on a low plateau about two kilometres south-east of the modern town, on the right bank of the Zeravshan. Soviet archaeologists from the Hermitage in Leningrad started systematic excavation here in 1946 and have continued every summer since. The site has yielded over five thousand square metres of brilliant mural paintings, hundreds of carved wooden statues and reliefs, and the documents that proved the Sogdians spoke a Middle Iranian language.
What you see today is the layout — citadel, two large temples, a residential quarter, the merchants' bazaar, a workshop quarter — preserved at chest-height in mud brick. There are almost no explanatory signs. The murals themselves were lifted decades ago and now hang in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and the National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe. Time the visit for a working-season morning (late spring through early autumn) and you may catch the dig in progress.