Mardan
Pakistan
Mardan, the second largest city in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, sits close to two of the region's most historically significant sites: the Ashoka rock edicts at Shahbaz Garhi, inscribed in Kharosthi script around the mid-200s BCE and considered the earliest irrefutable evidence of writing in South Asia, and the ruins of the ancient Buddhist monastery at Takht-i-Bahi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980. The area around the city was part of the Gandhara grave culture as far back as around 1800 BCE.
- Population300,424
- Nearest water from center0.7 km
- Nearest mountain from center6.3 km
- UNESCO within 50 km2