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UNESCO World Heritage Sites Iran

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Iran

Here is a list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in Iran and the year they were inscribed to the list.

Persepolis, Shiraz, Iran.
Persepolis

Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran (2008)

The Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran includes the ancient monasteries of St Thaddeus and St Stepanos and the Chapel of Dzordzor. The Kelisa Darre Sham (Church of St. Stephanos) is situated near the city of Jolfa near the Azerbaijan border. Set in dramatic mountain scenery, this church and working monastery was founded by the Armenian King Ashot in the 9th century though it is said that a church occupied this site as early as the first century AD.

Its oldest parts date back to the 14th century with the main building having been rebuilt in the late 16th century after being destroyed by an earthquake. The church is built in the style of Armenian or Georgian architecture with a bell tower and a cylindrical tower with a conical roof though archways featuring stalactite work are reminiscent of Persian mosque architecture. The exquisitely preserved exterior reliefs feature religious imagery such as angels and Armenian crosses.

The Qar-e Kelisa (The Black Church), also known as the Church of St. Thaddaeus is situated in foothills near the city of Siyah Cheshme. It is said that the disciple Thaddaeus (also known as Jude) was allowed to preach in the Armenian city of Edessa after healing the local king. The city of Edessa became the first Christian city and a church was constructed in 68 A.D. - only the second ever in the short history of Christianity. The dark stone domed sanctuary from which the church gets its name dates back to the 10th or 11th century while the main body of the church is a pale sandstone construction. This larger section, consisting of a 12 sided drum supporting a tent dome, was rebuilt after the church was damaged by an earthquake in 1319. Further additions were made in the 19th century. Reliefs typical of early Armenian churches decorate the outer walls. Some depict religious imagery such as effigies of saints and angels while others show battle scenes, hunting scenes and floral, geometric and arabesque patterns. The inscription over the entrance gate reads "Abbas Mirza" the name of the general sent to the region by Nasser Al-Din Shah to fight the Russians. Today, the church is a working convent and still attracts Armenian Christian pilgrims from all over Iran.

Guide to Azerbaijan.

Bam and its Cultural Landscape (2004)

Bam, situated in Dasht e Lut desert, on the southern edge of the Iranian high plateau, was an ancient walled citadel until much of the city was destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 2003.

Bam dates back to the Achaemenid period (553 BCE - 330 BCE) and was an important trading city on the crossroads of Asia. The Citadel of Bam (Arg-e Bam) was a magnificent fortified medieval town built using mud layers (chineh) and mud bricks (khesht). Water was supplied to the town using a system of irrigation channels known as qanat. The city reached its zenith in the 7th to 11th centuries and was known as a production center of silk and cotton.

Guide to Bam.

Bisotun (2006)

Bisotun is located along ancient trade routes and contains significant remains from the Achaemenid (553 BCE - 330 BCE) and Sassanian (226-650CE) periods. The main monument of the archaeological site near the village of Bisotun is a life-sized bas relief of Darius I (holding a bow) with two attendants leading away 10 smaller figures chained at the neck, representing defeated enemies, while treading, according to legend, on the figure of Gaumata, a pretender to the throne.

Around the reliefs are cuneiform inscriptions written in various languages, including an Elamite text, and a Babylonian version relating the story of Darius' defeat of rebels in his empire.

Guide to Kermanshah.

Golestan Palace, Tehran, Iran.
Golestan Palace, Tehran

Golestan Palace, Tehran (2013)

The Golestan Palace in Tehran (Palace of Flowers; کاخ گلستان‎; Kakh-e Golestan) is a collection of buildings set in a walled park veined with canals rushing down from the Tochal mountains. The buildings that make up this magnificent complex are some of the oldest in Tehran and mix both Persian and European architectural styles, in particular, French. Golestan Palace stands on the site of the historic Arg (citadel) of Tehran which was originally built in the time of Shah Abbas (r. 1588-1629) of the Safavid dynasty. The Arg became the official royal residence when Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar moved the capital of Iran to Tehran and further palace buildings were constructed during the reign of Karim Khan Zand (r. 1750-1779). Buildings commissioned by Naser Al-din Shah (r. 1848-1896), such as the Shams-ol-Emaneh ("Edifice of the Sun") and the Emarat-e Badgir ("Building of the Wind Towers") show traces of a European architectural style and building technology that the modernising king was influenced by on his travels.

Guide to Golestan Palace

Gonbad-e Qābus (2012)

The city of Gonbad-e Qabus (literally, "Dome of Qabus") is located in Golestan province, 40km from border of Turkmenistan and is named after the tower which is its most famous landmark. Built entirely of high-fired bricks so dense that they ring when struck, this remarkable construction is a tapering 55-meter tower with a pointed conical roof. It is situated on a hillock which raises it a further 15 meters above ground level and has brick foundations to a depth of 17 meters. The tower was a mausoleum built by and for Qabus Ibn Wushmgir, King of the Ziyarid line of Kings who ruled over Tabarestan (currently the provinces of Golestan and Mazanderan) from 927-1090. Apart from two inscriptions, bearing the name of the king and the year of its completion in 1007, the tower is completely featureless. The only entrance way leads into a cylindrical chamber empty all the way up to the roof and the single window is in the roof facing east. It is said that Qabus had his body suspended in a glass coffin at a height of 45 meters, away from profane hands and where the light of the rising sun would reach him every morning though no coffin or remains were ever found. The population of Gonbad-e Qabus includes a large concentration of Turkeman nomads now settled as farmers and regular equestrian events attract many tourists.

Guide to the Caspian Coast

Masjed-e Jāmé, Esfahan (2012)

Jameh Mosque (Friday Mosque) contains architecture from over 800 years of Persian history. It is the oldest of its type in Iran and the first Islamic building to utilize the four-courtyard layout of Sassanid palaces. The decoration represents developments in Islamic art of over a millennium.

Guide to Isfahan

Meidan Emam, Esfahan (1979)

The Meidan Emam or Meidan-e Imam was built by Shah Abbas I the Great at the beginning of the 17th century during the Safavid period. The monumental place is bordered on all sides by huge buildings, the Ali Qapu Palace, the Mosque of Sheikh Lotfallah, the Royal Mosque all linked by a series of two-storeyed arcades.

Guide to Meidan Emam.

Pasargadae (2004)

Pasargadae was founded by Cyrus II, the Great as the first capital of the vast, multi-cultural Achaemenid Empire. The 160-hectare archaeological site includes the Tomb of Cyrus II, Tall-e Takht, a fortified terrace and ruins of various other royal palaces, gatehouses and gardens.

Persepolis, Shiraz, Iran.
The wonders of Persepolis

Persepolis (1979)

Persepolis was founded as the capital of the Achaemenid Empire by Darius I in 518 BCE. Built up on a vast half-natural, half-man-made terrace, Darius constructed a palace complex where he reigned over an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to India.

Soltaniyeh (2005)

The mausoleum of Oljaytu was built in 1302-12 in Soltaniyeh, the then capital of the Ilkhanid dynasty. The octagonal mausoleum is topped with a 50m-tall turquoise dome and surrounded by eight minarets. Soltaniyeh is a defining building in the development of Islamic architecture.

Susa (2015)

Now a small, pleasant town, Shush (Susa; biblical Shushan) dates from 4000 years BC and was an strategic Elamite city and a regional capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The town also thrived in the SeleucidParthian and Sassanian periods and was an important center of the Christian faith in the 4th century. The city was gradually abandoned during the Mongol invasions. The ruins of ancient city site (small entrance fee) lie to the south of the modern town. At the entrance is the Chateau de Morgan, a fortress built to defend French archeologists working on the site at the turn of the 20th century. The ruins of the ancient citadel include a bare 1 foot high (30 cm) wall of the Palace of Darius dating from 521 BC and two huge stones from the base of the royal apadana (reception hall). Susa's other main attraction is the Tomb of Daniel, the supposed final remains of the biblical, probably mythical, Daniel, an official in the service of King Darius (522-486BC). Ancient Shush, known as Susa, was also the birthplace of Esther - the biblical saviour of the Jews in the time of their captivity in 6th century BC. The town prospered as a Jewish pilgrimage site for over a thousand years throughout the first millennium until the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The tomb visitors see today was built in 1871.

Takht-e Soleyman (2003)

Takht-e Soleyman (Throne of Solomon) is a Zoroastrian religious complex dating back to the Sassanid Period (226-650CE). The site includes a temple dedicated to the god of water, Anahita, as well as a large royal ceremonial hall. Much of the 13 meter high perimeter wall with its 38 towers is still in evidence today.

Guide to the Azerbaijan Region.

Tchogha Zanbil (1979)

The archaeological site of Tchogha (Choqa) Zanbil contains the ruins of the sacred city of the Elamites. Founded around 1250 BCE, the city is surrounded by three concentric walls but remained unfinished after it was attacked by Ashurbanipal. A huge 105m-sided brick ziggurat of the Elamite period, built by King Untash Gal, served as a temple dedicated to the god Inshushinak, until its destruction in 640BC. The well-preserved brickwork contains cuneiform (the world's first alphabet) inscriptions. The site around the zuggurant contains evidence of the early qanat water channels that brought water from an incredible 45 km away.

Guide to Ahvaz.

Yazd (2017)

The ancient city of Yazd can lay claim to being one of the oldest, continuously inhabited places on earth. Rising out of the desert, the winding alleys and high mud walls of the houses of the town are straight out of the pages of a fairy tale. Yazd is famous for its ancient ventilation system of badgirs (windtowers), designed to catch even the faintest of breezes and channel them to the buildings below. Yazd is also famous for its skilled qanat or water-channel diggers and the Yazd Water Museum pays homage to their ingenuity.

Guide to Yazd

Trans-Iranian Railway (2021)

The 1,394-kilometre-long Trans-Iranian Railway connects the Caspian Sea in the northeast of the country with the Persian Gulf in the southwest. Financed by domestic tax, this incredible feat of engineering crosses two mountain ranges and saw the construction of hundreds of bridges, tunnels and cuttings. Work started in 1927 and was completed in 1938 in a cooperation between the Iranian government and many foreign companies.

Cultural Landscape of Hawraman/Uramanat (2021)

The Cultural Landscape of Hawraman/Uramanat includes the Zagros Mountains in Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces. Inhabited over millennia, the people of the area have adapted to the steep mountain environment. 12 villages have been included in the designation and here dry-stone terraces, caves, rock shelters, roads and fortresses mark the semi-nomadic natives' adaptation to their surroundings.

Caravanserai, Iran.
Caravanserai, Iran

The Persian Caravanserai (2023)

Caravanserai (caravansary, karvansara) is a compound word combining "caravan" (karavan) with "sara". A caravan means a group of travelers and sara a home, place or building. Caravanserai is thus a place where travelers can reside and rest from his or her journey. 54 of Iran's hundreds more caravanserais from different historical periods and located in 24 provinces were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2023.

Qom, Iran
Entrance gate to the complex at Chogha Zanbil

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