The National Museum of Iran (Persian: موزهٔ ملی ایران, romanized: Mūze-ye Melli-ye Irān) houses the richest and largest collection of Iranian antiquities in the world. It is located in Tehran. The museum is the world's most important institution for Iranian history and one of the most comprehensive museums globally, home to over 3 million artifacts. The institution is formed of two museums; the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The institution is also considered a major global research hub for archeology, and it includes multiple research departments, categorized by different historical periods. The museum is one of the oldest archaeological museums in West Asia, and one of the region's earliest institutions dedicated to historical preservation and display.
History Morteza Gholi Khan Hedayat proposed the creation of a museum and antiquities department in 1906, although this plan only came to fruition in 1916. The first museum was established in a room of the Ministry of Education on the north side of the Dar al-Fonun school building. The museum had 270 bronze artefacts (pottery, glass, coins, old weapons, seals, wooden objects, patches, books and textiles) collected by the Antiquities Department or donated by local citizens. In 1925, the artefacts were moved to the Masoudieh Mansion.
With the start of excavations by European archaeologists, especially the French archaeological team headed by Jacques de Morgan in Susa (1897), Iranians began to comprehend the importance of cultural heritage. In 1927, the unconditional privilege of the French archaeologists in Iran was canceled. They were allowed to dig only in Susa. Since Iran had decided to establish a national museum and library, the privilege of designing and implementing it was given to France. For this purpose, the French architect Andre Godard came to Iran in 1929 to establish a museum and library and officially started his work.
The brick building of the Museum of Ancient Iran was designed by André Godard and Maxime Siroux in the early 20th century, and was influenced by Sassanid vaults, particularly the Taq Kasra at Ctesiphon. Its construction, with an area of about 11,000 square metres (13,000 sq yd), began in 1935 and was completed within two years by Abbas Ali Memar and Morad Tabrizi. It was then officially inaugurated in 1937. The Museum of the Islamic Era was later built with white travertine on the grassy grounds of the Museum of Ancient Iran, and was still being remodeled when the Iranian Revolution swept the country. While the Museum of Ancient Iran always had a clear mandate to show archaeological relics, as well as some rare medieval textiles and rug pieces, the newer complex also featured Amlash pottery from prehistoric Caspian Sea regions of Iran. The Museum of the Islamic Era exhibits over 1,500 works from Ilkanids, Seljuks, Timurids, Safavids, Qajars and more. The complex consists of three floors, and it contains various pieces of pottery, textiles, texts, artworks, astrolabes, and adobe calligraphy, from Iran's post-classical era. The oldest artifacts kept at the Ancient Iran Museum are from Kashafrud, Darband, and Shiwatoo, which date back to the Lower Paleolithic period. Mousterian stone tools made by Neanderthals are on display at the first hall of the Museum of Ancient Iran. The most important Upper Paleolithic tools are from Yafteh, dating back about 30,000 to 35,000 years. The Museum of Ancient Iran consists of two floors. Its halls contain artifacts and fossils from the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic, as well as the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, early and late Bronze Age, and Iron Ages I-III, through the Elamite, Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian eras.
Exhibitions
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