Persepolis

Interesting facts

Plutarch claimed Alexander needed some 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels to carry away the treasure of Persepolis.

In 1933 excavators found 25,000 to 30,000 clay administrative tablets, mostly in Elamite, packed into the collapsed fortification wall.

Those tablets were lent to the University of Chicago in 1935 for study, and a 2018 US Supreme Court ruling stopped claimants seizing them.

The great terrace covers about 125,000 square metres, roughly 450 by 300 metres, partly cut from the mountain and partly built up.

The Apadana roof once rested on 72 stone columns; only about fourteen still stand, one of them re-erected in the 1970s.

The columns of the Gate of All Nations rose about 16.5 metres and were crowned by capitals of paired bulls.

Gold and silver foundation tablets of Darius were found buried in stone boxes beneath the corners of the Apadana.

After Persepolis was abandoned, much of its stone was carted off to build the nearby city of Estakhr.

In 1971 the Shah staged the lavish celebration of 2,500 years of the Persian monarchy here, in a tent city beside the ruins.

A treasury archive of 139 tablets records payments in silver to workers between about 492 and 458 BC.

Why it is worth it

Persepolis, known in Persian as Takht-e Jamshid, the Throne of Jamshid, was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Darius I began it around 515 BC on a vast terrace of grey limestone, looking out over the plain of Marvdasht in Fars. Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I extended it, and building went on until the empire fell. It was never a large city; it seems to have been a stage for royal ceremony, used seasonally, and many scholars have linked it to the celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

The Elamite clay tablets found here show that the builders were paid workers from across the empire: Lydians, Carians, Ionians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Bactrians and others. Their empire is carved on the walls. Along the staircases of the Apadana, the great audience hall of Darius, delegations from the subject lands climb in procession bearing gifts, each people in its own dress, with its own animals and wares, rendered in astonishing detail. Visitors enter through the Gate of All Nations of Xerxes, guarded by colossal bulls, and pass on to the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the Tachara palace of Darius, the Hadish palace of Xerxes on the highest level of the terrace, and the treasury.

In 330 BC Alexander the Great took Persepolis and its palaces were soon destroyed by fire; ancient writers disagree whether it was revenge for the burning of Athens or a drunken whim at a feast. The Tachara escaped the worst of the fire and is now the best preserved building on the terrace. Travellers of the 17th century and later copied the trilingual inscriptions here, in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, and these copies played a key part in the decipherment of cuneiform. In the hillside behind the terrace are rock-cut royal tombs, and about 13 km to the northwest the cliff of Naqsh-e Rostam holds the tombs of Darius the Great, Xerxes and two later kings. Persepolis has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.

Getting there

The site lies about 11 km from the town of Marvdasht. Shiraz Shahid Dastghaib International Airport (SYZ) is about 53 km away.

Persepolis

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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