Taxila
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
How it came to be
Taxila, Takshashila in Sanskrit, lies in Rawalpindi district in Pakistan's Punjab. The first major settlement grew up on the Hathial mound around 1000 BC, and UNESCO says the Bhir mound, the earliest historic city, was probably founded under the Achaemenids in the 6th century BC. In 326 BC its ruler, Taxiles (Ambhi), surrendered the city to Alexander the Great without a fight. Buddhist texts say Ashoka served as governor of Taxila before becoming emperor.
In the mid-2nd century BC the Indo-Greeks built Sirkap across the river on a Hellenistic grid. The Kushans, a Central Asian people, destroyed Sirkap in the 1st century AD and built a new city, Sirsukh. Taxila sat on a branch of the Silk Road between China and the West, peaked between the 1st and 5th centuries, and was a major centre of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage.
Huns overran the region around 470 and caused widespread destruction, and the Chinese monk Xuanzang found the city desolate and half-ruined when he came in 630. The World Heritage property groups 18 sites, from a Mesolithic cave to Buddhist monasteries and stupas and a medieval mosque and madrasa. UNESCO listed it in 1980.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).