Kabul has been so damaged by wars and pell-mell rebuilding that it's hard to remember this was once a pretty city with elegant mud-brick mansions, elaborate carved-wood lattices, and shady courtyards.

But some of the old neighborhoods still exist, hidden away in what today are the poorest parts of town.

To find them means going to the very center of Kabul, where a bazaar the locals call "Titanic" appears each summer in the dry gulch of the Kabul River, then disappears again with the spring floods.

There, you have to duck behind the Soviet-era buildings and concrete-box shops surrounding the bazaar and plunge into a labyrinth of smoky, noisy lanes. As the smoke from the blacksmiths' forges stings your eyes and the hammering rings in your ears, you reach the neighborhood of Murad Khane.

For decades, this neighborhood of once-grand homes was so neglected that it literally fell into ruin. The mud-brick homes crumbled around the residents as they became too destitute to repair them. Some of the largest homes turned into cheap warehouse space for the nearby bazaar and their courtyards became dumping sites for trash from other parts of Kabul.

But now, Murad Khane is reviving. Since 2006, it has been the focus of a major renovation effort funded mostly by private international donors. And as its buildings return to view, the neighborhood is becoming one of the city's most charming historical treasures.