Everyone who has ever been to Persepolis and I suspect, many who haven’t, have written about Persepolis and done so far better than I ever could so I am not even going to attempt to give my impressions of the time we spent there except to say that there was a lot more left standing than photographs normally show.

My photos have gone through a triple selection since there is a limit to how many photos I can eventually upload to these pages and people are generally going to be bored with looking at other people’s travel photos.

However, I shall attempt to give a potted history of Persepolis for those who stumble onto this page and wonder what the fuss is about.

In about 518 BC Darius I began construction of a new capital near Pasargadae (that is for my own reference). The city never had a commercial or administrative role and was, perhaps merely a residence and treasury. The city came to symbolise the power of the Achaemenian rulers who lived at Persepolis mainly during the New Year celebrations, travelling from Susa for the occasion, a distance of some 500km.

Alexander the Great entered Persepolis in January 330 BC. The town had surrendered without a fight but it was sacked and destroyed anyway. Some say that this destruction was in revenge for the destruction of the Greek temples in Athens in 480BC.

The city was burned and historians are divided as to whether it was done deliberately or by accident; the end result was the same - the city was totally destroyed and abandoned.