"A modern in the Heart of Ancient" a Tehran Travel Page by azadeh

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Azadi Sq.

my City Tehran

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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.