National Museum of Afghanistan

The first museum in Afghanistan was established in 1919 at the Bagh-i-Bala palace overlooking Kabul, and consisted of manuscripts, miniatures, weapons and art objects belonging to the former royal families. A few years later the collection was moved to the king's palace in the center of the city and in 1931 it was officially installed in the present building, which had served as the Municipality. The original collection was dramatically enriched, beginning in 1922, by the first excavations of the Delegation Archeologique Francaise en Afghanistan (DAFA). Through the years other archaeological delegations have added their finds to the museum until today the collection spans fifty millenniums Prehistoric, Classical, Buddhist, hindu and Islamic and stands as one of the greatest testimonies of antiquity that the world has inherited.