Hegmataneh (Ecbatana)

Hegmataneh is the hill at the centre of modern Hamadan that holds the remains of ancient Ecbatana, one of the oldest cities of Iran. Greek writers knew it as the capital of the Medes, the people who formed the first great Iranian kingdom in the first millennium BCE, and the city's name survives, much worn by time, in the name Hamadan itself.

Herodotus tells that the Median king Deioces built Ecbatana as a fortress ringed by seven concentric walls, each painted a different colour, the innermost two plated with silver and gold. Whether or not this is literally true, the city was certainly a royal seat. Cyrus the Great took it from the last Median king, Astyages, around 550 BCE, and under the Achaemenids it became a summer capital, cool in the mountains when the lowland capitals were baking. Alexander of Macedon seized its treasury in 330 BCE, and his companion Hephaestion died there in 324 BCE.

Excavations on the hill since the 1980s have uncovered a grid of streets and mud-brick buildings, with walls and towers, though archaeologists debate how much of what is visible dates to the Median period and how much to later centuries. Finds from the site are shown in a museum on the hill, and protective roofs cover parts of the excavation.

For visitors, Hegmataneh is a place where the long history of Hamadan becomes visible. From the hill there are views over the city to Mount Alvand, the same mountain that looked down on the Median kings, and nearby are the Ganjnameh inscriptions and the Tomb of Avicenna.