Sa'dabad Complex

Sa'dabad Complex is a large hillside estate in Zaferaniyeh, in the Shemiran district of northern Tehran, that served as the summer residence of the Qajar and later Pahlavi royal families. The estate's oldest surviving structures date to the reign of Qajar monarch Naser al-Din Shah in the late 19th century, but most of the roughly 180-hectare grounds and their more than a dozen palace buildings took shape under Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi between the 1920s and 1970s, who used the complex as a royal residence until the 1979 revolution. The White Palace (Kakh-e Sefid), the largest building on the grounds, served as Mohammad Reza Shah's main residence and retains its original 1930s furnishings, including a large hand-woven Persian carpet said to be one of the biggest of its kind. The Green Palace (Kakh-e Sabz), built by Reza Shah, features green Qom marble facades and mirror-mosaic interiors typical of early Pahlavi-era design. After the revolution the complex was nationalized and its palace buildings converted into museums covering fine arts, military history, royal vehicles, and decorative arts, each retaining the room layout of its royal-era function. The museums are presented individually rather than as a single chronological narrative, since each palace was built and furnished at a different point across nearly a century of royal occupation. Extensive forest gardens with mature plane and pine trees, inherited from the Qajar-era estate and expanded under the Pahlavis, surround the palace buildings and are themselves a protected part of the complex. Restoration work on individual palace interiors, particularly woodwork and plasterwork, continues under Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization.