Din besök nummer sedan 990511Your visiting nr, since may 11.99
Altitude between 1,200 and 1,700 meters. Mehrabad Airport to the west of city. Railway: European link through Tabriz and Istanbul, internal lines to Mashad, Yazd and Khoramshar. Regular coach services in all directions.
Nearly 12 Million people live in Tehran Bozorg in contrast to two hundred thousand in 1920. Tehran is immense and proliferates like a coral reef, but in an orderly manner. Nine-tenths of the built up area is in square blocks with absolutely straight boulevards. The visitor who has been away for a while can no longer find the way around the city. New roads link the western part of the city to the northern quarters. Towering buildings have been erected right and left. Large stores, super-markets, self-service shops have been opened, public buildings, government departments and monuments have been built and an array of giant cranes show the development fever.
"North Tehran
-- city view"
Tehran is pleasant, it derives its
originality from its dry climate, always cool in the evening, its
pure sky, the nearness of the mountains, its numerous parks and
gardens where flowers blossom throughout the year, the alleys of
young plan-trees in the avenues or even smaller streets, the
water which runs down from the upper city along deep and wide
gutters which look like small rivers during spring.
"Park
Mellat"
Daring modern buildings, erected during
the past few years, give, despite their frequently dry
architecture, an impression of what tehran's beauty will be in
the year 2000.
"Bagh-e-Melli
Gate"
The Golestan (Rose Garden) Palace was the Qajars' royal
residence. Its garden is an oasis of coolness and silence in the
heart of the city. The main building, architecturally
unpretentious, houses a museum with objects from the Qajar period
in the overloaded and pompous style of last century. In the
Golestan garden, a one-story pavilion to the right and slightly
behind the entrance, shelters one of the best organized museums
in Tehran. Do not be discouraged by its scientific title. It
contains about thirty show-cases presenting everything which
makes up the basic originality of Iranian life in the various
provinces of the country.
"Golestan
Palace"
The Capital a veritable boom town under
going intense activity, continues to expand according to a
rational plan in a checkered pattern. Modern building rise up
beside 19th century houses.
"Boulevard
Keshavarz"
Tehran became a capital in the 19th
century. Its more ancient monuments bear the marks of that period
when everywhere in the world, taste had degenerated. Furthermore,
its rapid growth explains the proliferations of houses without
any style, fortunately laid out in square blocks, but anonymous,
without harmony, grey, with never a flower on their window-sills.
The baroque and pretentious appearance of certain facades,
particularly banks, built twenty or thirty years ago, do nothing
to improve the city's appearance.
"Shams-al
Emareh"
"Ta~atre-e
Shahr -- City Theater"
The Alborz range separates the central
plateau front the lush Caspian littoral, the only part of the
country where the rainfall is plentiful. The highest peak in the
country, Mt. Damavand, is an extinct volcano covered in snow for
most of the year.
"Alborz
Mountains"
Mount Damavand, the highest mountain in Iran, has for centuries,
attracted mountaineers, nomads and legends to its snow-covered
slopes. The epic hero Feraydun wrestled and defeated the
evil giant Zahhak, chaining him to a cave on the mountain
peak. Villagers living near the base of the volcano still remark
that Dahhak is straining to be free at the first signs of
smoke or rumbling often heard deep within the mountain. On a
clear day, the 18,550 foot cone is visible from Tehran, fifty
miles away.
"The
Beautiful Mt. Damavand"
In winter, the mountain hotels and
ski-clubs at Shemshak, Shahrestanak and Dizine are full several
days a week. Some expert skiers people consider the snow quality
in northen tehran to be one of the best in the world.
Dozen of small houses with zinc roofs nestle among the bushes.
Some are private dwellings, but most are coffee-houses. Mountain
streams run among the tables. But everyone does not sit around a
table, many of the customers prefer the ancient-style comfort of
low divans covered with old carpets. Delicious "kababs"
are peacefully consumed accompanied by boling hot tea and Pepsi-Cola
sodas.
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