Iran - Andrew Burke [80]
The contrast with the West, where people disappear on ‘holidays’ for weeks so they can be remodelled without anyone knowing, is stark. In Tehran, the nose job has become such a status symbol that some people have taken to wearing plasters on their noses just so they can look like they’ve had the job done. Which might be taking it just a little too far…
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Film museum of Iran
Housed in a Qajar-era mansion built by Shah Nasir od-Din for his daughter, the Film Museum (Map; 2271 9001; www.filmmuseum.ir; Bagh-e Ferdows, off Valiasr Ave; admission IR10,000; 10am-5pm Tue-Thu, Sat & Sun, 2-5pm Fri) has well-displayed exhibits of equipment, photos and posters from Iran’s century-old movie industry. It’s interesting, even if you are not well-versed in Iranian film, and the building is fascinating.
The highlight is a sublime 121-seat cinema with moulded plaster ceilings. New and classic Iranian films are screened here at 3pm, 5pm, 7pm and 9pm daily. Seats are IR15,000 and if you ask nicely they will turn on subtitles in the language of your choice (assuming languages are available); call 2272 3535 to see what’s on. A shop also sells hard-to-find Iranian films on DVD (IR40,000), and the chic café Click here is the ideal place for post-film contemplation.
Look for the street with a garden down the middle and a sign to Bahoner Library.
SA’D ABAD MUSEUM COMPLEX
Set on 104 hectares of spectacular mountainside parkland, the Sa’d Abad Museum Complex (Map; 2228 2031; www.saadabadpalace.org; Valiasr Ave, Taheri St; several tickets required; 8.30am-4pm, to 5pm summer) was once the royal summer home. There are more than 10 buildings scattered around the site and to see them all you’ll need at least three hours; combining a visit here with lunch in nearby Darband is a good idea.
Today, most of the buildings at Sa’d Abad house museums. Some musums are more interesting than others but the individual tickets are only sold at the front gate, so you’ll need to decide where to go in advance. For example, be sure to buy a ticket for the Nation’s Art Museum, or you won’t be able to see the basement of the White Palace. The ticket sellers should give you a map-cum-guide to the site – in barely intelligible English – though you might need to ask. Note too that it’s well worth taking the free minibus from outside the White Palace up to the Green Palace, then walking down.
What is now called the White Palace (Palace of the Nation; admission IR5000) was built between 1931 and 1936 and served as the Pahlavi summer residence. The two bronze boots outside are all that remain of a giant statue of Reza Shah – he got the chop after the revolution. The 5000-sq-metre, 54-room palace is no Versailles. Instead it’s a modern building filled with a hodge-podge of extravagant furnishings, paintings and vast made-to-measure carpets. The tiger pelt in the office, among other things, reveals the shah as a man of dubious taste, though in fairness pelts were more in vogue in the 1950s.
Whatever you think of the furnishings, the White Palace was the height of luxury in its day. Look for the discreet air-conditioning units that fold away into the walls; or the shah’s 20 cues in the billiards room – little has changed since the revolution. In the upstairs Ceremony Hall is a 143-sq-metre carpet that is said to be one of the largest ever woven in Iran. The nearby Dining Hall contains a similar carpet, and it is here that the shah, convinced the palace was bugged, dragged a table into the middle of the room and insisted both he and the American general he was entertaining climb on top of it before they spoke. Don’t miss the trippy stainless steel staircases at the back of the ground floor, which spiral down to the Nation’s Art Museum (admission IR3000) in the basement.
At the uphill end of the complex, the more classical-looking Green Palace (Shahvand Palace; admission IR5000) was built at the end of the Qajar era and extensively remodelled by the Pahlavis. Shah Reza lived here for only a year and apparently