[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

If you want to see artifacts from the Bactrian hoard, your time has come. A selection of around 20,000 gold artifacts excavated in 1978 from several tombs in Tilla Tepe in northern Afghanistan by a Greek-Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi is displayed in Beijing.

National treasures from Afghanistan－a country along the Silk Road that has seen continuous war and social upheaval over the past few decades－offer new insight into the country's past.

The gold items are probably the first things to catch the visitors' attention. But other artifacts, including stone articles, bronze ware and glass art also sparkle in the exhibition hall.

The three-month exhibition, Afghanistan: Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, opened at the Meridian Gate Gallery in the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, on Friday.

The 231 exhibits are from the period covering the third century BC to the first century AD. They were unearthed from four archaeological sites in Afghanistan and give visitors a glimpse of the initial years of the Silk Road.