National Museum of Iran

The National Museum of Iran is Tehran's principal archaeology museum, divided between the original 1937 building on Si-e Tir Street and the Museum of the Islamic Era wing added in 1996. The permanent collection traces Iranian material culture from Paleolithic stone tools through Elamite, Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid artifacts in the older wing, and Islamic-era ceramics, glass, textiles, and illuminated manuscripts from the 7th century onward in the newer wing. Notable pieces include stone reliefs recovered from Persepolis, the Achaemenid capital, and a large collection of Luristan bronzes. Display cases are organized by period rather than by object type, letting visitors move roughly chronologically through each wing, with wall text summarizing the political history of each era alongside the artifacts on show. The museum functions as the central repository for finds from major state-sponsored excavations, meaning its holdings are frequently updated as new archaeological work concludes elsewhere in the country. Conservation labs on site handle cleaning and stabilization of newly arrived finds, some of which rotate into temporary display cases before formal cataloguing. Given its role as a national repository rather than a single-collector museum, the presentation favors breadth over depth in any one gallery, with detailed period-by-period context provided through printed and wall-mounted materials rather than audio guides.