Museum sights in Iran
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Golestan Palace Complex
In what was once the heart of Tehran is this monument to the glories and excesses of the Qajar rulers. A short walk south from Imam Khomeini Sq, the Golestan Palace complex is made up of several grand buildings set around a carefully manicured garden. Admission isn’t expensive but, annoyingly, you must buy a separate ticket for each building, and all at the front gate.
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Carpet Museum
That's an image you'll find repeated as both carpet and giant wood-inlay works in the separate Carpet Museum, where rugs range from beautiful classics through to garish coral gardens and a Tabriz-made carpet-portrait of WWI bogey-man Kaiser Wilhelm II. Tying the staggering 30 million knots for Seven Beloved Cities took 14 years. Upstairs, beside the shoe-deposit counter, is a two-room Calligraphy Gallery displaying priceless Korans, many dating back over a millennium.
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National Jewels Museum
The National Jewels Museum which is owned by the Central Bank but actually housed underneath the central branch of Bank Melli, is probably the the biggest tourist drawcard in Tehran. If you’ve already visited the art gallery at the Golestan Palace, you will have seen the incredible jewellery with which the Safavid and Qajar monarchs adorned themselves. Come here to gawp at the real things.
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National Museum of Iran
The modest National Museum of Iran is no Louvre, but it is chock-full of Iran’s rich history and should be on every visitor’s list of things to see in Tehran.
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Yazd Water Museum
For at least 2000 years Iranians have been digging qanats (underground water channels) to irrigate crops and supply drinking water. To build a qanat you first need to find an underground water source. This source could be more than 100m deep, but as the whole system is reliant on gravity the source must be higher than the final destination. Then you dig a tunnel just wide and tall enough to crawl along, so the water can flow across an extremely shallow gradient to its destination.
The mounds of soil you'll see in long lines across the desert are the top of wells, dug to dispose of excavated soil and allow ventilation.
Because of the hazards and expense of constructing a …
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Main Museum
Bequests and donations from the faithful fill the Haram’s fascinatingly eclectic museums. The Main Museum kicks off with chunks of now-superseded shrine-décor interspersed with contemporary sporting medals presented by pious athletes. The basement stamp collection includes a 1983 commemorative featuring the ‘Takeover of the US Spy Den’. The 1st-floor Visual Arts Gallery offers you the opportunity to shower money (or hats) down onto the top of the Holy Shrine’s fourth zarih tomb encasement (replaced in 2001). Amid seashells and naturalist landscape-paintings of Surrey, notice Mahmood Farshchian’s modern classic Afternoon of Ashura. It’s a grief-stricken…
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Reza Abbasi Museum
Named after one of the great artists of the Safavid period, the Reza Abbasi Museum showcases Iranian art from ancient times and the Safavid-era paintings of Abbasi himself. If you like Iranian art, it’s one of the best and most professionally run museums in the country. The museum is organised chronologically starting with the top-floor Pre-Islamic Gallery, where you’ll find Achaemenid gold bowls, drinking vessels, armlets and decorative pieces, often with exquisite carvings of bulls and rams. Here, too, you’ll find fine examples of Lorestan bronzes. The middle-floor Islamic Gallery exhibits ceramics, fabrics and brassware, while the ground-floor Painting Gallery…
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Gonbad-e Jabaliye
At the edge of town is the mysterious, octagonal Gonbad-e Jabaliye, which houses a mildly interesting and poorly labelled museum of old gravestones. It’s mysterious because its age and original function remain unknown – a Kerman Tourism brochure sums it up as ‘A big, strange dome in the eastern part of Kerman’. Quite! Some scholars date it to the 2nd century AD and think it may have been an observatory. Others say it was a tomb. Whatever its function, it is remarkable because it is constructed of stone rather than the usual brick; though the double-layered dome, added 150 years ago, is brick. When taking photos (outside only) be careful to point your camera away from the…
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Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
On the western side of Park-e Laleh, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is in a striking concrete modernist building constructed during the shah’s rush to build modern landmarks in the 1970s. Contrary to preconceptions of Iran, here’s a collection of art (not always modern and rarely contemporary) by Iranian artists and some of the biggest names of the last century. Established during the ’70s under the direction of the progressive Queen Farah Diba, the museum holds arguably the greatest collection of Western art in Asia – worth between US$2 billion and US$5 billion. It includes works by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Miró, Dali, Bacon, Pollock, Monet and Warhol, among…
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Azarbayjan Museum
Entrance is through a great brick portal with big wooden doors guarded by two stone rams. Ground-floor exhibits include finds from Hasanlu, a superb 3000-year-old copper helmet and curious stone ‘handbags’ from the 3rd millennium BC. Found near Kerman these were supposedly symbols of wealth once carried by provincial treasurers. The basement features Ahad Hossein’s powerful if disturbing sculptural allegories of life and war. The top floor displays a re-weave of the famous Chelsea carpet, reckoned to be one of the best ever made. The original is so-called because it was last sold on King’s Rd, Chelsea, some 50 years ago, ending up in London’s Victoria & Albert…
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Carpet Museum of Iran
Just north of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the two floors of the Carpet Museum house more than a hundred pieces from all over Iran, dating from the 17th century to the present day; the older carpets are mostly upstairs. The museum itself was designed by Queen Farah Diba and mixes ’70s style with carpet-inspired function – the exterior is meant to resemble threads on a loom, which cool down the main building by casting shadows on its walls. You will often see weavers working on a loom on the ground floor and questions are welcome. Inside, a shop sells postcards and books and there’s a pleasant café. Flash photography is not allowed.
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Museum of the Islamic Period
This modern building contains two floors of exhibits from a selection of Islamic arts, including calligraphy, carpets, ceramics, woodcarving, stone carving, miniatures, brickwork and textiles. Don’t miss the silks and stuccowork from Rey, portraits from the Mongol period, a collection of Sassanian coins and gorgeous 14th-century wooden doors and windows. Look also for the beautiful Paradise Door, a 14th-century lustre-painted mihrab (niche in a mosque indicating the direction of Mecca) from Qom, and a 19th-century inlaid door from Esfahan.
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Museum of the Holy Defence
The Museum of the Holy Defence commemorates the eight-year Iran–Iraq War. Symbolism abounds, although much of it won’t be obvious without an English-speaking guide. Inside is a gallery of gruesome photos, artefacts, letters and documents from the war, and an animated model re-enacting the Karbala V, a famous battle. Outside, along with a line-up of tanks and missile launchers, is a battlefield complete with bunkers, minefield and sound effects recorded from the actual war. Well worth a look.
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Negar Khane
The Negar Khane displays a fine collection of Qajar-era art. It was the brainchild of Nasser al-Din Shah, who'd been particularly captivated by European museums. Especially interesting are the portraits of the shahs wearing the jewels and crowns you can see in the National Jewels Museum, and pictures of everyday life in 19th-century Iran by Kamal ol-Molk and Mehdi. Women were certainly wearing chadors back then, too. The difference is that the men were also swaddled in three layers of clothing. Well worth a look.
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Sanati Museum of Contemporary Art
This newly renovated museum is a pleasant surprise in a town that can otherwise feel a long way from modern cultural pursuits. In a Qajar-era building set around an attractive courtyard, the museum houses paintings, sculptures and stone inlays by famous local artist Sayyed Ali Akbar Sanati (1916–2006). It also has exhibitions by younger Iranian artists and even a bronze hand by Auguste Rodin. Not surprisingly, it’s a good place to meet open-minded young Kermanis.
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Mehdi Gholibek Hamam
In its shadow, Mehdi Gholibek Hamam is one of Iran’s most interesting and spacious bathhouse museums. The main delight is the wonderful central dome re-painted for centuries in multiple levels – most recently in 1922 with naive murals that feature anthropomorphic figures gallivanting between giant bicycles, a Russian vintage car, an early biplane and a curiously unconcerned- looking victim facing a firing squad.
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Pars Museum
Bagh-e Nazar and the octagonal Pars Museum at its centre are other notable Zand-era additions. It's possible to walk around the garden and view the delightfully decorated pavilion where Karim Khan received foreign dignitaries. The interior is stunning, with the stalactite ceiling a particular highlight. Exhibits include Karim Khan Zand's sword and indeed, his grave. Photography is not allowed.
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Iran Ebrat Museum
There is nothing subtle about the Iran Ebrat Museum, a one-time prison of the shah’s brutal secret police that now exhibits that brutality with an equal measure of pro-revolution propaganda. The prison is an incongruously attractive building, with wings radiating from a circular centre. But what went on here was not attractive at all.
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Rasht Museum
Rasht Museum is small, but well presented in a 1930s house. Its mannequin displays illustrate Gilaki lifestyle, amid a selection of 3000-year-old terracotta riton drinking horns in the shape of bulls, rams and deer. Supping from such vessels supposedly endowed the drinker with the powers and skills of the animal depicted.
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Decorative Arts Museum of Iran
The Decorative Arts Museum of Iran is in a building that once served as stables and warehouse to Safavid kings. Today it contains a fine collection from the Safavid and Qajar periods, including miniatures, glassware, lacquer work, ancient Qurans, calligraphy, ceramics, woodcarvings, traditional costumes, weapons and horse gear.
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Gilan Rural Heritage Museum
The excellent Gilan Rural Heritage Museum is 18km south of Rasht (2km off the Qazvin highway). Six full homesteads complete with rice barns are already ‘active’ in 150 hectares of woodland. On open days, local crafts (thatching, mat-making, cloth-weaving) are displayed and there are tight-rope walking mini-shows.
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Sa’d Abad Museum Complex
Set on 104 hectares of spectacular mountainside parkland, the Sa’d Abad Museum Complex was once the royal summer home. There are more than 10 buildings scattered around the site and to see them all you’ll need at least three hours; combining a visit here with lunch in nearby Darband is a good idea.
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Film Museum of Iran
Housed in a Qajar-era mansion built by Shah Nasir od-Din for his daughter, the Film Museum has well-displayed exhibits of equipment, photos and posters from Iran’s century-old movie industry. It’s interesting, even if you are not well-versed in Iranian film, and the building is fascinating.
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Niyavaran Palace Museum
The Niyavaran Palace Museum, the complex where Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family spent most of the last 10 years of royal rule. It’s set in five hectares of landscaped gardens and has four separate museums – tickets must be bought individually at the main gate.
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Foreign Pilgrims Assistance Office
Friendly, multilingual staff at the Foreign Pilgrims Assistance Office can show you a 20-minute video about the Haram and shower you with books on all things Shiite. However, once you've visited this office there's no escape from the free, friendly but over-protective guide/minder they assign you.
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