Persepolis

Persepolis was the ceremonial city of the Achaemenid kings, raised on a vast stone terrace at the foot of a mountain in Fars. Darius I began it around 518 BCE, and his son Xerxes and later kings added halls and gateways over the next two centuries. Iranians call it Takht-e Jamshid, “the throne of Jamshid”, after a legendary king of the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings, long before archaeologists confirmed whose city it really was.

Visitors climb a broad double staircase, shallow enough, it is often said, to be ridden up on horseback, and pass through the Gate of All Nations built under Xerxes, guarded by huge winged bulls with human heads. Beyond lies the Apadana, the great audience hall, of which a handful of tall stone columns still stand.

The finest work is on the Apadana's eastern stairway. There, in low relief, delegations from across the empire walk in procession bearing gifts: Lydians with bracelets and bowls, Bactrians leading a two-humped camel, Ethiopians carrying an elephant tusk. Each group is led by the hand by a Persian or Median usher.

In 330 BCE the palaces were burned after Alexander of Macedon took the city, and the charred cedar of the roofs helped preserve what lay beneath. Persepolis was inscribed by UNESCO in 1979.