Nisa

Nisa lies at the foot of the Kopet Dag mountains near Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. It was one of the earliest capitals of the Parthians, the Iranian dynasty of the Arsacids, who ruled an empire from the Euphrates to Central Asia from the third century BCE to the third century CE. The fortresses of Nisa were inscribed by UNESCO in 2007.

The site has two parts. New Nisa was the town; Old Nisa, a walled citadel on a raised platform, was a royal and religious complex known in its own day as Mithradatkert, “made by Mithradates”, after one of the dynasty's kings. Inside are the remains of great halls, including a square hall and a round hall with thick mud-brick walls, and storerooms.

Excavations in the twentieth century brought out remarkable finds. Several thousand ostraca, potsherds inscribed in Parthian with records of wine deliveries, revealed the workings of the royal economy. A group of carved ivory drinking horns, called rhyta, decorated with Greek mythological scenes, showed how Greek and Iranian art met in the Parthian world. Today the site is quiet, its eroded walls rising from dry grass with the mountains behind, a short drive from the white marble of modern Ashgabat.