Falak-ol-Aflak

Falak-ol-Aflak stands on a high rock in the middle of Khorramabad, the capital of Lorestan, commanding the valley and the river that runs below. Its name is an Arabic-Persian phrase meaning “heaven of heavens”. The fortress is thought to have Sasanian origins, and it was rebuilt and used through many later periods, serving as a seat of local governors and, in the twentieth century, as a prison.

Its outline is unmistakable: a compact mass of high brick and stone walls with round towers, rising straight up from the rock so that wall and cliff seem continuous. Within are courtyards, halls and a well cut deep into the rock to supply water during sieges. The surviving towers give the fortress its rhythm, and from the ramparts the view sweeps across the city to the Zagros ridges.

Today the fortress houses museums, including one of archaeology that displays the celebrated Lorestan bronzes: small cast horse bits, harness pieces, standards and figurines, many of them with stylised animals and hybrid creatures, made in the region in the early first millennium BCE and earlier. There is also an ethnographic museum on the life of the Lor people. At night the walls are floodlit, and the fortress becomes the city's lantern.