A platform built to impress
Persepolis lies at the foot of the Kuh-e Rahmat, a rocky hill on the plain of Marvdasht in Fars, about 60 kilometres north-east of modern Shiraz. The core of the site is a large terrace, partly cut from the natural rock and partly built up with massive stone-faced fill, which raises the buildings above the surrounding plain. Estimates of its size vary, but it is commonly described as roughly 450 metres long by 300 metres wide, and its height above the plain varies because the ground slopes.
The terrace did practical work as well as symbolic work. Cut channels and drains run beneath it, and some are large enough that a person could crawl through, carrying rainwater away from the buildings. A mud-brick defensive wall with towers ran along the sides of the terrace that were not protected by the hillside. Where the rock needed shaping, it was cut and levelled, and where it needed raising, stone blocks were fitted tightly, often without mortar and with metal clamps to join them.
Building phases
The site was not built at once. Darius I, who came to the throne around 522 BCE, began the terrace and its first major structures about 518 BCE, according to the general scholarly consensus. His projects are generally taken to include the foundation platform, the Apadana, the Treasury, and a palace usually called the Tachara, with the Council Hall (Tripylon) also attributed to the earlier phases or to Xerxes in some accounts.
Xerxes, who ruled from 486 BCE, finished the Apadana and added the monumental entry known as the Gate of All Nations, his own palace (sometimes called the Hadish) and the start of the Hall of a Hundred Columns. His son Artaxerxes I is generally credited with finishing the latter hall. Later kings, such as Artaxerxes III, made further additions, so building continued for more than a century, and the finished complex reflects several reigns rather than one design.
Inscriptions on the buildings, most of them in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, are the main evidence for who built what. Where inscriptions are absent, attributions rely on style and excavation evidence and are less certain.
Persepolis was also one of several royal building projects. Darius had a palace built at the city of Susa in the same years, and comparing the two helps scholars see which features were specifically Persian court style, in the broader sense of Persian imperial culture, and which belonged to a particular site.
Entering the terrace
A broad double stairway on the west side formed the principal approach. The steps are shallow, so visitors could ascend them in a stately way, probably including people on horseback or with attendants, though the exact mode of use is not recorded. At the top lies the Gate of All Nations, a square hall with four columns and two huge stone bulls with human heads flanking the western entrance, reminiscent of the guardian figures that stood in the gateways of the Assyrian Empire. Visitors passed through the gate into the terrace.
Inscriptions on the gate in several languages name Xerxes and present the structure as an achievement carried out through the grace of Ahura Mazda. The name “All Nations” is a modern label suggested by the inscriptions and by the idea that people from many lands passed beneath it.
Moving through the complex
From the gate, a processional way led south and east. To one side stood the Apadana, the great audience hall, whose carved stairways, the famous Apadana staircase reliefs, face into the terrace. A smaller square building to the south, the Council Hall, linked the Apadana area with the palaces beyond. To the east lay the Hall of a Hundred Columns, a large square chamber that some scholars call the Throne Hall. Its doorways carry reliefs of the king enthroned and of the king in combat with fantastical beasts.
The Treasury, a large complex of many rooms and courtyards, occupied the south-east. It was a storage and accounting building, and tablets found there record payments to workers. The palaces of Darius and Xerxes stood on the southern part of the terrace, raised on their own low platforms. They had columned halls, smaller rooms, doorways and window frames of polished dark stone, and relief scenes of attendants carrying food and towels. Together they probably served as living and reception space for the king, though who used which rooms and when remains uncertain.
A planned circulation
The layout appears to have been designed so that visitors passed from public to progressively more restricted spaces: stairway, gate, great hall, then smaller chambers and palaces. Reliefs along the way, showing the king, courtiers and delegations, reinforced the hierarchy. This is an interpretation based on architectural form, and we cannot reconstruct the real protocols of the court, which are poorly documented. Some areas, such as the Hundred Columns Hall, may have hosted large gatherings, while the palaces had more restricted use.
Beyond the terrace
The terrace was only part of the settlement. Archaeologists have found traces of a lower town and gardens in the plain beyond it, along with evidence for workers’ quarters and other structures. These are far less well preserved than the monuments. Cut into the cliff of Naqsh-e Rustam, some kilometres to the north, are the rock-cut facades of royal tombs, beginning with the burial traditionally assigned to Darius I. Tombs of later kings are carved into the hillside behind the terrace itself.
Reading Persepolis as a whole shows a complex built to display royal power and to host a large number of people, with water, defence and storage worked in from the beginning. The complex ended in fire in 330 BCE, an event discussed as the burning of Persepolis, after Alexander of Macedon arrived.