Herat Citadel (Qala Ikhtyaruddin)

A fortress on the hill in the centre of Herat. Tradition dates its beginnings to 330 BC, when the army of Alexander the Great arrived here, though the surviving walls are far younger. Genghis Khan destroyed the defences in 1221; in 1305 the Kartid ruler Malik Fakhruddin rebuilt the fortress, in 1380 Timur's army took it, and under Shahrukh (1405-1444) the walls were laid in stone and fired brick and faced with tiles. Between 2006 and 2011 the citadel was fully restored with the help of the Aga Khan Trust and the governments of the United States and Germany. Today it houses the Herat National Museum, with a collection of some 1,100 objects from the region.

On the map