The Full Story of the Bamiyan Buddhas

The Bamiyan Buddhas: Giants of the Silk Road, Gone But Not Forgotten For nearly 1,500 years, the Bamiyan Buddhas stood watch over the Silk Road. Carved into the sandstone cliffs of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley in the 6th century, these monumental statues — one rising about 55 meters tall, the other 38 — were among the largest standing Buddhas in the world. They gazed out across a crossroads of civilizations, where merchants, monks, pilgrims, and conquerors once passed between East and West.