Kashgar Silk Road Museum was built in 1992, covering an area of 2360 square metres,  the museum has 10 showrooms featuring bronze wares, ceramics, ancient Turkic paintings and rugs, calligraphy works, sculptures, seals, coins, jade wares, furniture and handicrafts of Persian, Turkic, and Indian. The most famous artifacts such as 4000 year-old bronzes and 3000 year-old wooden tomb figures are display here.

Islam had arrived in Kashgar by the 10th century, and Kashgar became a center of Islamic learning, producing among others one of the greatest Muslim scholars and lexicographers of the 11th century, Mahmud al-Kashgari, who wrote Diwan Lughat al-Turk (Compendium of the Turkic Dialects), since translated into 26 languages. He was buried just outside the city, in the village of Upar.

It was in Kashgar that the early Muslims encountered strong Chinese, Persian, Turkic, and Indian influences, evidence of which can still be seen in the art and architecture of the region today. The Islamic religion, however, displaced a multi-religious tradition that combined elements of Buddhist, Manichaean, Zoroastrian, and even early Nestorian Christian practices. (There was a Nestorian archbishopric in Kashgar as early as 650.) Especially Hinayana Buddhism flourished from the second century until the coming of Islam: In 644, the traveling Chinese monk Xuanzang recorded not only the widespread practice of Buddhism, but also the vibrancy of Kashgar's bazaar and the multi-ethnic character of its people, some with "blue eyes" and "yellow hair," perhaps of Sogdian or East Iranian origin.

China tours inclusive of visiting Kashgar Silk Road Museum