Did you know that the largest archway in the world was built some 2,000 years ago by Persian architects?

The famous Taq Kasra, Persian name: ایوان خسرو, (Ivan of Khosroes) is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world today and the only visible remaining structure of the ancient city of Ctesiphon, Persian ( تیسفون), protected by UNESCO. Ctesiphon was capital of the Sasanian Empire from 226–637 until the Arab conquest in 651 AD. This arcway is considered as Wonder of Architecture.

The term Persian architecture or Iranian architecture refers to the architecture in present-day Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Its history dates back to at least 5,000 BC with characteristic examples distributed over a vast area from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan to Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar and Spain.

Many dome structures were featured in Persian architecture some 2.000 years ago. The Sassanid Empire initiated the construction of the world’s first large-scale domes with royal buildings such as the Palace of Ardashir and Dezh Dokhtar. The famous Taq Kasra, or Ivan of Khosroes is the remains of a Persian monument from the Sassanid period dated to the 3rd century.

The Persian architectural style became a major influence also on Islamic societies and the dome became a feature of both Muslim and Catholic architecture. Baroque and neoclassical architecture was inspired by Persian domes.

500 years earlier than that, Persepolitan architecture was noted for using the “Persian column”, which was probably based on earlier wooden columns. In 515 BC Persepolis architects resorted to stone only when the largest cedars of Lebanon or teak trees of India did not fulfil the required sizes.

Pericles, the Greek general in Greco-Persian war, was amazed and influenced by Persepolitan architecture. After his return from Persia, he started the construction of the Athenian buildings based on “Persian column”, starting the so-called Golden Age of Athens, whose present remains are the evidence of this, including the Parthenon and Acropolis of Athens (447 BC).

You can find this and many more amazing stories about Persia in my new book "Modern Iran and Ancient Persia", available in 5 languages worldwide, or follow me here on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. With this book, we travel to the places where the amazing stories from our childhood took place, to the places where the 1001 nights stories took place some two thousand years ago, from Isfahan to Shiraz to Yazd to Persepolis. It is an adventurous journey into 10,000 years of the world's oldest and continuous culture.

Music courtesy of Renaud Garcia-Fons, album (CD) Méditerranées.
Images: Sadeghi, FabianKhan, Kushak, Argerich, Taassob, Mahdi Karim, Morteza, Amir Pashaei, Domiri Ganji, Heravi, Bernard Gagnon, Diego Delso, Nicola e Pina, Ninara, Ali Karimzadeh, Zenith210, Meraji, Samaneshraghi and many more CC-BY,2.0
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