96 Fun Facts About Persepolis

Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of which Persian dynasty?

The Achaemenids ran their empire day to day from other, older cities, which may be why the Greeks barely knew this one existed until an invading army reached it.

In which modern country is Persepolis?

Iran treats the ruins as a national emblem: their columns and carvings have been copied on stamps, carpets and bank buildings, and one of the country's biggest football clubs is called Persepolis.

What do Persepolis's clay tablets mostly record?

Wages and rations fill the tablets: grain, wine and silver handed out to craftsmen from across the empire, with new mothers given extra, twice as much for a boy as for a girl.

Which conqueror's army took Persepolis in 330 BC?

Alexander the Great, by one ancient account, called it 'the most hateful of the cities of Asia' and let his soldiers plunder everything but the palaces, which burned a few months later.

According to Plutarch and Diodorus, which courtesan urged the burning of Persepolis?

Thaïs is said to have thrown her torch right after the king's own; she was the companion of his general Ptolemy, the future ruler of Egypt.

What did the burning of Persepolis supposedly avenge?

The Persian destruction of Athens lay 150 years in the past, and one ancient account has a senior general object that the conqueror would only be burning what was now his own property.

Which festival have many scholars long argued Persepolis was built to celebrate?

Nowruz, the Persian New Year, falls at the spring equinox, and many scholars read the site's ceremonial carvings as a record of it; others reply that no text shows the festival being held there.

What does the Greek name Persepolis mean?

City of the Persians was a Greek coinage that the builders never used: they called the place by the same name as their homeland and their people.

Medieval Persians called the site Takht-e Jamshid, meaning what?

Throne of a mythical king: later Persians had forgotten who built the ruins, so they credited them to Jamshid, a legendary ruler whose demons were said to carry him about on his throne.

The winged, human-headed bulls guarding Persepolis's Gate of All Nations were borrowed from the art of which earlier empire?

Assyria's palace guardians were carved with five legs so that they looked right from both the front and the side; the Persian sculptors dropped the extra one.

Which Persian king founded Persepolis around 518 BC?

Darius I boasts in an inscription beside the original entrance that no fortress had stood on the spot before, and he credits the work to craftsmen from the many nations he ruled.

Which stone were the columns, stairways and doorframes of Persepolis cut from?

Grey limestone was used for the parts that still stand; the walls between were mostly mud brick and have crumbled, which is why the ruins are a forest of columns and doorways.

The terrace of Persepolis was partly built up and partly cut out of what?

A mountainside: the builders cut back the bedrock of a rocky spur, packed the hollows with boulders and rubble, and faced the whole with fitted blocks to make a platform of 125,000 square metres.

The Macedonians took the pass before Persepolis by a hidden path, echoing which earlier battle?

Thermopylae in reverse: this time Persians held the narrow pass against a Greek-led army, and a local guide is said to have shown the invaders the way round.

Plutarch says the treasure of Persepolis was carried away on 20,000 mules and 5,000 of which other animal?

Camels were needed because the vaults held two centuries of the kings' savings: another ancient writer puts the hoard at 120,000 talents, reckoned in silver.

Which animal combat is carved again and again on the stairways of Persepolis?

A lion attacking a bull recurs all over the site, almost like a coat of arms; it is often read as a sign from the heavens, with the lion standing for the sun.

A later Persian tradition says the conqueror who burned Persepolis also destroyed which treasure, written in gold ink on cow-skins?

The Zoroastrian scriptures are said to have burned in a priestly book written centuries later; ironically, the palace fire may have saved thousands of clay tablets by burying them under a fallen wall.

Which city, itself later eclipsed by Shiraz, rose beside the ruins of Persepolis and reused their stone?

Estakhr, five kilometres away, went on to be the home city of the Sasanian dynasty, and it resisted the Arab conquest so fiercely that many of its people were killed.

Which deity do the royal inscriptions at Persepolis thank as 'the greatest of the gods'?

Ahura Mazda is named in text after text, and the winged figure hovering over the king in the carvings was long taken for his image; many scholars now read it as a symbol of royal fortune.

The graphic novel Persepolis opens with its author's childhood during which upheaval?

The Islamic Revolution had toppled the Shah a year before the story opens in 1980, with its heroine aged ten, the child of politically active parents who had opposed him.

What was found in 2011 at Tol-e Ajori, 3 km west of Persepolis?

A gateway resembling Babylon's Ishtar Gate, with the same glazed-brick beasts, stood here; its excavators think it went up after Persia took Babylon in 539 BC and before work on the great terrace began.

What was the Apadana used for?

Official audiences of the King of Kings were held under a roof carried by 72 columns; only 13 still stood in modern times, though the ruins' old nickname, Forty Minarets, recalls a taller skyline.

Under the corners of the Apadana at Persepolis, excavators found a coin hoard and foundation tablets made of what?

Gold and silver plaques lay in stone boxes with a handful of coins beneath them, every coin foreign, probably because the empire had not yet begun striking its own.

The coins buried beneath the Apadana at Persepolis include a type first struck by which famously wealthy king?

Croesus lost his kingdom of Lydia to the Persians, yet the conquerors kept striking his coin design: the buried pieces were fresh from a mint under Persian rule.

What do the Apadana staircase reliefs depict?

Peoples of the empire in traditional dress bringing gifts fill the stairway in 23 delegations, and an usher takes the leader of each one by the hand to bring the group before the king.

Who carved his name into Persepolis's Gate of All Nations in 1870, a year before his famous meeting in Africa?

Henry Morton Stanley cut 'New York Herald' beside his name, for the paper that had him touring the East; the following year he set off into Africa to find the missing David Livingstone.

By what other name is the Throne Hall known?

The Hundred-Columns Palace had ten rows of ten columns in a hall nearly 70 metres square, and its doorways are carved with the king on a throne held aloft by figures of his subject peoples.

Persepolis's founder lies in a cliff tomb at which nearby site?

Naqsh-e Rostam has four royal tombs cut high into one cliff, yet only one carries an inscription naming its owner; the other three are matched to kings by informed guesswork.

Inscriptions copied at Persepolis first unlocked which ancient script?

Cuneiform began to give way in 1802, when a young German teacher used the word for 'king', repeated in texts copied at the ruins, to work out the royal names around it.

What was staged at Persepolis in 1971?

The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire lodged its royal guests in a tent city beside the ruins, with a banquet catered by Maxim's of Paris, which shut its own doors for almost two weeks.

Which living things are slowly eating into the stone carvings at Persepolis?

Lichens grow into the stone itself and give off acids that dissolve it, pitting reliefs that fire and many centuries of weather had spared.

A dam finished in 2007 raised fears for Persepolis and, even more, for the tomb of which Persian king?

Cyrus the Great lies at Pasargadae, close to the new lake; engineers said both sites sat well above the waterline, while archaeologists feared the damp air from it would harm the ruins.

How is most of the animated film Persepolis presented, in keeping with the graphic novel it adapts?

In black and white, like the books: only the present-day scenes at a Paris airport are in colour, so the remembered story plays out as one long, stark flashback.

Who wrote the autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis?

Marjane Satrapi's memoir of growing up under censorship later ran into it abroad too: in 2014 it was among the ten books Americans most often tried to have removed from libraries and schools.

In which language was the graphic novel Persepolis written and first published?

French was the language of the author's schooling and of Paris, her adopted home, where a comics publisher brought the story out in four volumes from 2000 to 2003.

In which European city does the heroine of the graphic novel Persepolis spend four of her teenage years?

Vienna is where her parents sent her at 14 to keep an outspoken girl out of danger; she ended up sleeping rough there for months before going home to Tehran.

The 2007 film Persepolis was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar but lost to which Pixar film?

Ratatouille won, a comedy about a rat in a Paris kitchen beating a memoir of revolution; Persepolis had the consolation of a shared Jury Prize at the Cannes festival.

Which actress voices the heroine's mother in the original version of the film Persepolis?

Catherine Deneuve plays opposite her real daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, who voices the heroine, and both recorded their parts again for the English-language release.

Persepolis lies on the plain of Marvdasht in which province?

Fars is the old Persian homeland: the Greek form of its name gave the world 'Persia', and the Arabic form, with an F, gave the language its name, Farsi.

Persepolis went up alongside a sister palace, its likely model, in which older capital?

Susa's palace has travelled further than its sister: the best of its decoration was shipped abroad, and its glazed-brick frieze of royal archers now hangs in the Louvre.

Persepolis lies on a plain ringed by the southern end of which mountain range?

The Zagros had to be crossed to reach it: the Macedonian army fought its way through one of the few passes in the range in midwinter before marching on the city.

The spear-carrying guards carved in rows at Persepolis are often identified with which elite corps of the king's army?

The Immortals got their name, Herodotus says, because the corps was kept at exactly 10,000 men: any soldier who fell or sickened was replaced at once.

Although its kings spoke Persian, the clay tablets of Persepolis were mostly written in which older language?

Elamite was what the palace clerks wrote, whatever was spoken at court: among tens of thousands of tablets, just one in Old Persian has ever turned up.

In the graphic novel Persepolis, whom does the young heroine turn her back on after her uncle is executed?

God had been her comfort amid the upheaval, but when her beloved uncle is put to death as a supposed spy she sends him away, and her childhood innocence goes with him.

The American team that dug Persepolis in the 1930s took home a colossal stone bull's head now shown in which city?

Chicago's university ran the dig, and the head, from the portico of the Throne Hall, was its share when the finds were divided with the host government.

Plutarch describes the conqueror of Persepolis stopping to speak to a toppled statue of which king?

Xerxes, he asked the fallen statue, should I leave you lying there or set you up again? After a long silence, Plutarch says, he walked on and left it where it lay.

In Persepolis, Marji tells the Guardians her jacket button shows Malcolm X; which pop star is really on it?

Michael Jackson's face marked Marji as a fan of banned Western pop when a women's patrol stopped her in the street, as did her new sneakers and denim jacket.

In Persepolis, what are poor schoolboys handed as a promised pass to paradise if they die at the front?

A plastic key worn round the neck went only to boys from poor families; when the housekeeper's son brings one home from school, Marji's mother tries to talk him out of believing in it.

In Persepolis, Marji's parents smuggle home posters of Kim Wilde and which heavy metal band from a trip to Turkey?

Iron Maiden turn out to be a favourite of Marji's father as well, a confession the women of the family refuse to believe.

In Persepolis, what does young Marji secretly plan to become, while telling her parents she will be a doctor?

A prophet is her answer to unfairness at home: her own holy book rules that servants should eat at the table and that old people should feel no pain.

Which scientist, Marji's girlhood idol in Persepolis, is the subject of its author's 2019 film Radioactive?

Marie Curie is the future Marji sees slipping away when the new regime shuts the universities; decades later she directed Rosamund Pike in the role.

In Persepolis, which small act in the family basement does Marji treat as her rebellion against her mother?

Smoking a cigarette stolen from her uncle, Marji coughs her way through it and announces that her childhood is over.

In Persepolis, which flowers fall from the bra of Marji's grandmother, who tucks them in every morning?

Jasmine petals spill out as she undresses on Marji's last night at home, a scent Marji promises herself she will never forget.

Which punk rock pioneer voices Uncle Anoosh in the English-language version of the animated film Persepolis?

Iggy Pop, wild frontman of the Stooges, plays the gentle communist uncle who tells Marji bedtime stories about his years in prison.

At which film festival did the animated film Persepolis premiere in May 2007 and share the Jury Prize?

Cannes split the prize between Persepolis and the Mexican drama Silent Light, despite a letter of protest from a foundation linked to Iran's government.

In Persepolis, how do Marji's parents get two rock posters from Turkey past the customs officers at home?

Sewn inside a coat by Marji's mother, the posters come through on her father's back; he feels ridiculous in the bulky thing, but the agent waves them past.

In Persepolis, which bird has Uncle Anoosh sculpted out of bread in prison as a present for Marji?

A swan made of prison bread is his gift after a night of family stories, and he hands Marji a second one on her last visit before his execution.

In Persepolis, where does Uncle Anoosh flee to study Marxism after his own uncle Fereydoon is arrested?

The USSR is where Anoosh married, had two children and divorced before slipping home in disguise, only to be recognised and jailed for nine years.

In Persepolis, what does Marji recognise in the rubble after a missile destroys the Baba-Levys' building next door?

A bracelet belonging to her friend Neda juts from the wreckage: the family had moved to a hotel for safety, but the missile fell on the Sabbath, when they came home.

In Persepolis, which illness does Marji's grandmother plead so a patrolman lets her upstairs to pour away the alcohol?

Diabetes buys her the minutes to empty every bottle down the drain, only for Marji's father to come up and report that the man had simply wanted a bribe.

In Persepolis, the hospital director who must approve Uncle Taher's surgery abroad once held which job for Taher's wife?

Window washer turned hospital chief through his religious zeal, he leaves the permit to fate, and Taher dies three weeks later without seeing his son again.

In Persepolis, what payment tells Niloufar's family that the regime has executed her?

A dowry of 500 tumans, about five dollars, reaches her parents because the law forbade executing a virgin, so a guard married her first.

In Persepolis, the boy next door stops courting Mehri once Marji's father reveals what about her?

She is their maid, not his daughter, Marji's father explains, and the boy hands back her love letters, all in Marji's handwriting because Mehri could not write.

In Persepolis, which make of car is Marji ashamed to ride in, a shame she traces to the gap between social classes?

Cadillac rides with her father embarrassed Marji, and she understood why only after reading Ali Ashraf Darvishian's stories about children forced into hard labour.

In Persepolis, which ballistic missiles fired at Tehran make the family's basement shelter seem pointless?

Scuds could bring down a whole building, so Marji's family stop going downstairs when the sirens sound, while much of Tehran simply empties out.

In Persepolis, jailed air force pilots agree to bomb Baghdad only if what is broadcast on television?

The national anthem had been banned and replaced by the new regime's own, so hearing it again on TV leaves Marji's whole family in tears.

In Persepolis, how do Siamak and his family cross the border after gunmen come for him?

Among a flock of sheep the family creeps out of the country, after the men who came for Siamak failed to find him and killed his sister instead.

In Persepolis, what does Marji's uncle secretly make in a basement laboratory so that family parties can go on?

Wine from his hidden lab is poured at a party for a newborn cousin, where a power cut and air-raid sirens send the baby's mother running without her child.

In Persepolis, Marji soaks in a long bath to imagine the ordeal of which relative, once held in a flooded cell?

Her grandfather, a prince turned communist who had served as the Shah's prime minister, was shut for hours in a cell full of water; Marji climbs out with hands as wrinkled as his.

The author of Persepolis claimed descent from Naser al-Din Shah, a ruler of which dynasty that preceded the Pahlavis?

Qajar shahs ruled until 1925; in the book, Marji learns that her mother's father was a prince who lost everything when the first Pahlavi shah seized power.

In Persepolis, how does Marji's mother disguise herself after European newspapers print her photo at a demonstration?

She dyes her hair and hides behind dark glasses, frightened once the same angry picture had also run in a magazine at home.

In Persepolis, what is Kansas, the hangout in north Tehran where Marji's older friends take her when they skip class?

A burger joint named after a US state had survived, Marji guesses, only because the regime never noticed it; there the girls flirt with boys in fashionable haircuts.

In Persepolis, which forbidden activity keeps Marji's father out so late at a protest that the family fears him dead?

Taking photographs of the protests was strictly banned; that day he had gone to a hospital and watched a crowd hail a man who died of cancer as a martyr.

What is the last thing Marji sees through the airport glass at the end of Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood?

Her mother fainting in her father's arms is the book's closing image, and Marji wishes she had walked on without turning round.

In Persepolis, who runs the boarding house that expels Marji after a row over eating pasta straight from the pot?

Catholic nuns took Marji in when her mother's friend Zozo sent her away; after one sneered at her manners and her country, Marji answered with an insult and was thrown out.

In Persepolis, which boyfriend does Marji find in bed with another woman when she surprises him on her birthday?

Markus was the first serious romance of Marji's life, and she had spent her savings on him; she never sees him again, and within days she is sleeping rough.

In Persepolis, which illness nearly kills the homeless Marji and lands her in a foreign hospital?

Bronchitis struck after months on the streets and she collapsed; when her parents reach her by phone, she makes them promise never to ask about that time.

In Persepolis, what does the landlady Frau Doktor Heller accuse Marji of stealing, driving her out of the house?

A brooch goes missing just as Marji's romance collapses, and the accusation sends her out to a park bench with nowhere left to go.

In Persepolis, which fellow art student does Marji marry at twenty-one, only to be sleeping apart within a month?

Reza, a painter she met at a party, won her father's blessing only by agreeing that Marji would keep the right to divorce.

In Persepolis, how does one of Marji's friends die when the morality police raid a secret party?

Falling from a rooftop as he tried to leap to the next building, Farzad became the reason many of the group gave up parties, though Marji vowed to keep going.

In Persepolis, which punishment do Marji and her boyfriend avoid when their families pay a fine for their holding hands?

A flogging was the threat for touching in public; unable even to rent a room together without a marriage certificate, the pair soon decide to wed.

In Persepolis, what job does Marji take up after surviving an overdose and resolving to remake herself?

Aerobics instructor is the reinvented Marji: having slept for three days after swallowing all her antidepressants, she takes her survival as a sign to live.

For her art college entrance exam in Persepolis, Marji redraws which Michelangelo sculpture using a martyr?

Pietà, the Virgin mourning her dead son, was recast with war martyrs to suit the examiners, and Marji found her name on the admissions list in the newspaper.

In Persepolis, what is Marji asked to design after she challenges the art college's administrators at a public meeting?

A women's uniform with a shorter headscarf and wider trousers was her answer, a small victory that also won back her grandmother's respect.

Persepolis's first English volume is named for a childhood; what is the second volume's subtitle?

The Story of a Return follows Marji home from her lonely teenage years in Europe and on through art college, marriage and divorce.

Which star of Mystic River and Milk voices Marji's father in the English dub of the film Persepolis?

Sean Penn recorded the part alongside Gena Rowlands, who voiced Marji's sharp-tongued grandmother.

Persepolis 2.0, a ten-page online remix made with the author's permission, retells which event of 2009?

A disputed election, the vote that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was retold by two Shanghai-based artists who reused her drawings and added one new panel about Twitter.

Which actress voices the adult Marji in both the original and the English-language versions of the film Persepolis?

Chiara Mastroianni recorded the role twice, once in each language, while a different child actress voiced the young Marji in each version.

Which comics artist, who signs his own books Winshluss, co-wrote and co-directed the film Persepolis?

Vincent Paronnaud shared two César awards with the book's author for the film, for best first feature and best adaptation.

Which Paris comics publisher, co-founded by the cartoonist David B., first issued Persepolis in four volumes?

L'Association put out one volume a year from 2000 to 2003, and the first English edition appeared only as the series was ending.

Persepolis ranked second on which organisation's list of the most challenged books in the United States for 2014?

American Library Association records show three separate school challenges that year, in Oregon, Illinois and Texas, and the book stayed on the shelves in all three.

A 2011 television broadcast of the film Persepolis led to street protests and a trial in which North African country?

Tunisia's Nessma TV aired the film, and the station's owner, Nabil Karoui, was found guilty of disturbing public order and fined 2,400 dinars.

Which state decoration did the author of Persepolis turn down in 2025 over visa hurdles for Iranian dissidents?

The Legion of Honour, she wrote, was impossible to accept while the children of Iranian oligarchs holidayed freely in a country that kept young dissidents out.

Which Asian capital's international film festival dropped Persepolis in 2007 after its director met Iran's embassy?

Bangkok's festival director called the film artistically good but agreed with the embassy that withdrawing it would benefit both countries.

Persepolis won its first prizes at the long-running international comics festival of which town?

Angoulême gave the first volume its Coup de Coeur award in 2001 and the second its prize for best script a year later.

In Persepolis, which newly banned device do Marji's parents hide in the 1990s to follow news from abroad?

A satellite dish kept Marji glued to foreign channels for days on end, until her father scolded her and handed her a pile of history books instead.