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Virtual Pardis پردیس مجازی
Virtual Pardis

Heritage travel

پردیس
الا یا ایها الساقی ادر کأسا و ناولها
که عشق آسان نمود اول ولی افتاد مشکل‌هاO cupbearer, pass the cup around: love seemed easy at first, then came the difficulties.

اگر آن ترک شیرازی به دست آرد دل ما را
به خال هندویش بخشم سمرقند و بخارا را

Hafez would give away Samarkand and Bukhara. You can visit them instead.

Persian heritage stretches far beyond today’s borders: from the gardens of Shiraz to Rumi’s tomb in Konya, from the blue domes of Samarkand to the Persepolis treasures in museums from Chicago to London. This is a guide to travelling through that heritage, in person where you can and through Virtual Pardis where you cannot yet.

The pavilion reflected at night.
The pavilion reflected at night.Photo: Hamidhassas, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Before you travel to Iran. Many governments currently advise against all travel to Iran, including the United States, which lists it at Level 4, “Do Not Travel.” Check your own government’s latest advice before making any plans; for Americans, that is the State Department travel advisory. Until it is possible again, the routes below can be travelled here.

Travel through Iran, virtually

Each route links to our landmark pages, with history, photographs and what to look for.

Windcatchers and domes over the old city at dawn.

Desert cities

Wind towers and sand

Yazd, with its wind towers and qanats, the Tabriz Bazaar, and the Lut Desert, one of the hottest places on earth.

Persian heritage you can visit today

The Mevlana Museum in Konya.
The Mevlana Museum in Konya.Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The nearest great pilgrimage of Persian poetry outside Iran is Rumi’s tomb in Konya, Turkey. And some of the finest treasures of Persian art are a short trip away in museums across North America and Europe.

  • Konya, Turkey. Rumi’s green-domed tomb, now the Mevlana Museum. Go in December for Shab-e Arus, when the whirling ceremony marks the anniversary of his death.
  • Samarkand and Bukhara, Uzbekistan. The cities Hafez offered for a mole, and great centres of Persian poetry and learning. Rudaki, the father of Persian poetry, wrote at the court of Bukhara.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Galleries of Persian art, including painted pages from the Shahnameh made for Shah Tahmasp, among the finest manuscripts ever produced.
  • The British Museum, London. The Cyrus Cylinder, often called the first charter of human rights, and the Achaemenid gold of the Oxus Treasure.
  • The Louvre, Paris. The glazed-brick Frieze of Archers from the palace of Darius at Susa.
  • ISAC Museum, University of Chicago. A colossal stone bull’s head from Persepolis, excavated in the 1930s.
  • National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian’s collection of Persian manuscripts, paintings and ceramics.
Delegations bringing gifts to the king, on the Apadana staircase.
Delegations bringing gifts to the king, on the Apadana staircase.Photo: Phillip Maiwald (Nikopol), CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
The Feast of Sadeh, from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp.
The Feast of Sadeh, from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp.Photo: Sultan Muhammad / Ferdowsi, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
The tomb of Saadi in Shiraz.
The tomb of Saadi in Shiraz.Photo: Omid Hatami, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Share your journey

Have you visited a poet’s tomb, a Persian garden or a museum collection? Share your photographs and stories with the community in the Virtual Agora. If there is interest, we would love to plan group visits to museums near Pardis members.

No group trips are planned yet.

Photo credits

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