Noilly Prattle: Persian Odyssey: Part XIII

Monday, May 28, 2012

Persian Odyssey: Part XIII - Persepolis...

… the climax and crowning glory of my journey through ancient Persia and modern Iran.

Shiraz - tomb of Hafez
Wikipedia image

Although I had one or two students from Shiraz in my class I had made no arrangement to visit them in the course of my journey. Time was running short as well and I was due back in Esfahan to start the next leg of my contract. I was scheduled to be an in-flight tutor with the students who had graduated from the classroom part of their training program. More on that later. At any rate, I more or less bypassed Shiraz, which is known in Iran as the “city of poets”, two of whom, Hafiz 14^th Century and Saadi 12^th and 13^th Centuries, have monuments (tombs) there.

panoramic view of Persepolis looking west - Wikipedia image

first impression - double stair to the site

Gate of Nations

Persepolis turned out to be largely for my eyes only. There was hardly anybody there on the sunny morning I pulled up to the massive double staircase that leads up to the archeological site. I spent the entire day wandering around the site including the nearby sites of Naqsh e Rostam [tomb of Darius and other Achaemenid kings}and Pasargad [palace and tomb of Cyrus the Great], taking photographs until the breathtaking sunset at Persepolis ended a memorable day. I will simply post pictures, some of them my own, some taken from the web to fill in the gaps in what I either lost or failed to record at the time, and let Persepolis speak for itself across a span of some 2500 years.