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 others.