Aspakhu Fire Temple

In the small village of Aspakhu, also written Espakhu, in the western part of North Khorasan near the edge of Golestan National Park, stands a sturdy square building of rough stone. It is identified as a fire temple of the Sasanian era, a place where the sacred fire of the Zoroastrian faith was kept, and it is one of very few buildings of that age still standing in north-eastern Iran.

Its walls are about two metres thick and are pierced by narrow openings shaped like keyholes. Its plain mass is more like a small fortress than the delicate brick shrines of later centuries. Villagers have long called it the kelisa, the “church”, a name the cultural heritage authorities and travellers note is a local tradition rather than a description of its original use.

The temple is the centrepiece of a wider historic landscape. The provincial cultural heritage office lists more than a dozen sites around the village, including castles, tombs and an old mine, and the surrounding district was well settled in the Parthian and Sasanian periods. The village itself keeps traditional mud houses and old trees.

The building was registered as a national monument in January 1978. Today it draws a small but steady stream of visitors, including photographers who come to see the stone walls under the night sky, far from the lights of any city.