---
title: "At Taxila, the building across from the famous temple was much bigger all along"
description: "Jandial D was recorded in 1864 and then mostly left alone. An Italian team now says it is nearly 100 metres long, and nobody knows what it was for"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-10-13T19:13:44Z
modified: 2026-10-14T04:07:53Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/at-taxila-the-building-across-from-the-famous-temple-was-muc-a59fae
language: en
tags: ["archaeology", "history", "pakistan", "greece", "temples", "asia"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# At Taxila, the building across from the famous temple was much bigger all along

*Jandial D was recorded in 1864 and then mostly left alone. An Italian team now says it is nearly 100 metres long, and nobody knows what it was for*

By Nate Ledger · October 13, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/at-taxila-the-building-across-from-the-famous-temple-was-muc-a59fae

## In brief

- Excavations near Taxila, Pakistan, have uncovered Jandial D, a building nearly 100 metres long and more than 50 metres wide
- Alexander Cunningham recorded the site in 1864, but it was never systematically investigated until digging began in mid-August 2026
- Its purpose and date are unknown; archaeologists think it may have had a public or religious function
- The dig is part of Ca’ Foscari’s Khyber PATH project, funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation
- Pakistani officials and a Dawn editorial warn that urban expansion threatens Taxila’s less-studied remains

Here is a fact about attention. Outside the walls of Sirkap, the ancient fortified city at Taxila in northern Pakistan, stands a temple with Ionic columns. It looks enough like a Greek temple that it has become one of the standard examples of Hellenistic influence in South Asia. People have been writing about it for over a century. Directly across from it is another building. That one is nearly 100 metres long and more than 50 metres wide, and until this summer nobody had properly dug it up.

The second building is called Jandial D. The British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham recorded it in 1864, which is 162 years ago, and then, [as Arkeonews reports](https://arkeonews.net/massive-ancient-monument-discovered-opposite-greek-style-temple-in-pakistan/), nobody ever investigated it systematically. In mid-August 2026 the Italian Archaeological Mission of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice started excavating. On October 13 the university announced what it had found: substantial walls that survive to at least one metre high, and in some places higher. Pakistani outlets got there first. [Dawn reported the find](https://www.dawn.com/news/2035915/archaeologists-discover-ancient-structure-at-jandial-in-kp-near-sirkap) on October 9 and described it as a joint project with the Directorate General of Archaeology and Museums of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

So what was it? The honest answer is that nobody knows yet. A building that big may have had a public or religious function, and that’s the archaeologists’ working assumption. They are clear that they don’t know its purpose or its date. It could have been a sanctuary, some other kind of public monument, or something else entirely. It also sits directly opposite the Ionic temple, which is tempting, but at present there is no evidence that the two buildings were built at the same time or had anything to do with each other.

![Ancient stone foundations fill a dry, shrub-covered landscape, with a columned temple on a nearby hillside and mountains in the distance.](https://rews.cc/img/2c92c4898faae3dfe3e3690ff00a1e3c658e5c44.webp)

The size is easy to work out roughly. Nearly 100 metres by more than 50 metres comes to something like 5,000 square metres. [La Brújula Verde](https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/10/archaeologists-excavate-a-nearly-100-meter-building-opposite-pakistans-greek-style-temple-at-taxila-its-purpose-is-unknown/) compares that with the temple, which it puts at about 45 by 30 metres, or roughly 1,350 square metres. On those numbers the unexcavated building across the road is more than three and a half times the size of the famous one. Imagine running a museum where the small vase gets a gallery, a catalogue and a century of scholarship, and the big crate next to it gets an inventory number and nothing else. To be fair, the vase has Ionic columns.

## Location, location

Luca Maria Olivieri, professor of Central Asian and Indian archaeology at Ca’ Foscari and director of the mission, puts most of the weight on where the building is. Jandial D lies along the old route from Sirkap’s northern gate toward Gandhara, the region where several cultural and religious traditions met. “The discovery confirms the richness and unpredictability of the region’s archaeological heritage,” Olivieri said in the university’s announcement. He added that the building’s monumental scale and strategic position raise new questions about ancient Sirkap and about Gandhara.

I think the interesting question is what the building says about the land outside the walls. It’s easy to picture a fortified city as the place where things happened, surrounded by fields. A 5,000-square-metre monument on the road out of the north gate suggests the area beyond the fortifications was more than empty ground around the settlement. What actually went on out there, and how it connected to life inside the city, is still unclear.

![Two robed travelers and a laden donkey follow a winding red road through stone ruins and green countryside, viewed from a massive stone gateway.](https://rews.cc/img/bb517586446e409b871a344457d62a39df8ff525.webp)

Some background. Taxila has been shaped by Persian, Greek, Central Asian and South Asian traditions, one after another and often all at once. Sirkap was founded around the second century BCE and is known for its planned street grid and for monuments in several architectural styles. The Buddhist monasteries and stupas nearby date from the later period when the area was a centre of religion and learning. UNESCO put Taxila on the World Heritage List in 1980, citing its successive settlements as an exceptional record of urban development on the subcontinent. John Marshall excavated the Jandial temple in the early twentieth century and documented its plan: an entrance porch, an inner sanctuary and a rear chamber, arranged the way a Greek temple would be. Across from both buildings are the remains of Kacha-Kot, a rammed-earth fortification associated with Sirkap, and the dig has drawn new attention to it as well.

## Who pays

The excavation belongs to a programme called Khyber PATH, an archaeology and conservation initiative that covers eight sites between Taxila and the Swat Valley. Ca’ Foscari runs it with the archaeological authorities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The money comes from the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, with support from ISCOS. The other sites include Barikot and the ancient settlement of Bazira in Swat, and Sirsukh, another fortified city in the Taxila area, where the team is excavating, exposing and conserving parts of the defensive walls.

![Hands brush soil from ancient stone ruins beside a wooden crate containing a trowel, brushes, rolled cloth, coins, and an Italian tricolor ribbon.](https://rews.cc/img/0b487507ca38f45510f69a7f04c75c1a8a53e3af.webp)

Italy’s development budget is paying to excavate a Pakistani monument that a British surveyor wrote down in 1864. That is fairly normal for archaeology, and it explains some of the delay. Somebody has to decide that a large, unexplained building is worth the money. The building does nothing to make that case for itself, and Ionic columns make a better pitch.

There is also the matter of who else wants the land. According to Dawn’s report, Abdul Samad stressed the need to protect archaeological remains threatened by expanding urbanisation, and Arkeonews notes that this threat falls hardest on the less famous parts of Taxila, which describes Jandial D exactly. A [Dawn editorial](https://www.dawn.com/news/2036807/taxilas-hidden-past) argued for protecting the site. It recalled UNESCO’s concern earlier this year that restoration work at Mohra Moradu and Sirkap had damaged the authenticity of the remains there, and it urged Pakistan to welcome the Italian partnership while also investing in local archaeologists, conservators and students who can carry the work on.

That’s a reasonable point. A foreign-funded project ends when its funding does, and a 5,000-square-metre site whose purpose nobody knows needs looking after for much longer than that. For now the team still has to work out the building’s chronology, how it was built up over time, and how it related to the structures around it. Further excavation will be needed for all of that, ideally before anyone develops the land around it.

For 162 years the building’s main protection was that hardly anyone was paying attention to it. It now has everyone’s attention, which is better for scholarship. Whether it’s better for the building depends on what happens with the land around it.