Photos from old government buildings of Rasht, the largest city on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast. Almost all the buildings are still standing, but some of them with different names from the past. For example, today “The hospital building Baladieh” is known as “Municipal Building No. 2”.
* Images provided by Damon Moradi.
A few years ago due to fluctuations in the level of the Caspian Sea in the last decade, a shipwreck has been exposed from under the coastal sand near the Miankaleh peninsula.
The Azadi Tower, formerly known as the Shahyad (a translation of King Memorial Tower), is the symbol of Tehran and marks the entrance to the city.
It is becoming very common to see defaced Iranian banknotes. There are so many in circulations with rubber stamps or even printed personal slogans and messages on them. According to Iranian Central Bank, the life span of a banknote is about 5 years, while in other countries it is about 10 years.
Constructed in the 1880s, Lalezar avenue – also known as “Champs-Elysées of Tehran”- was once a symbol of modernity in a pre-modern country. There were many well-known theatres, restaurants, nightclubs, bars, cinemas and shops in Lalezar Avenue. (→ See today’s Lalezar Avenue)
A collection of pre-revolutionary Iranian cigarettes made in the years between the 1920s and 1978.
Akhbar magazine (meaning “News”) was a monthly magazine published by the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Iran.
These pages are from issues number 5 and 6, published in May and June of 1980 and have been provided by Mehrdad Kashani.
These photographs show one of the earliest performances of a Western-style play in Iran. The play was Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice performed in Zoroastrians Club in Tehran , April 19, 1928. Majid Rezvani was the director. Arbab Aflatoon, a Zoroastrian, was the Merchant of Venice, and Kazem Bakhtiari acted as a female character. In those days the Iranian women still could not act in the plays yet.
* Photographer: Jahangir Mossavar Rahmani- From the personal collection of Yadollah Rezvani.
These love messages on two postcards are dated April 18 and November 17, 1912 . Both postcards belong to the personal collection of Yadollah Rezvani.
This Iranian bicycle license was issued in 1930 and owned by Jafar Rezvani. The license includes the regulations for owning and using bicycles.
* From the personal collection of Yadollah Rezvani.
