Daves Travel Corner - Kourosh Ziabari: There are currently nine world heritage sites registered to UNESCO from Iran: Persepolis is the first of them all. 

Persepolis is the main symbol of Persian culture and civilization for Iranians around the globe and is reckoned a source of honor for young people in modern day Iran. 

The architectural traits of this ceremonial palace make it a unique site in the country — and the world — and an attraction for thousands of tourists who travel to the country just to visit Persepolis.

The palace is known to modern Iranians as “Takht-e-Jamshid” or the throne of Jamshid. Jamshid is a mythological king of Persian Empire who has been described in great detail by Ferdowsi in “Shahnameh,” the most esteemed epic poem in Persian literature.

Many historians attribute this ceremonial capital to the Achaemenidan dynasty, which goes back to about 2,500 years.

According to Andre Godard, the French archaeologist who excavated Persepolis during the early 1930s, this site was constructed under Darius the Great, but Cyrus the Great chose it as the capital of his kingdom.

The Persepolis complex consists of various parts and halls, the most predominant of which are the gate of all nations, Apadana palace and the throne hall.

The Persepolis was attacked by the army forces of Alexander the Macedonian in the year 330 BC which caused irrecoverable damage to the buildings and destroyed the major sections and halls of it. 

A fire at Xerex palace after the Alexander troops left Iran was yet another disaster for that former glorious site, which led to the destruction of more than 40 percent of Persepolis.

In any case, the invasion of Persia by Alexander and his awesome military was an unforgettable nightmare for the Sasanid dynasty.

Describing Persepolis in words is difficult. The remaining ruins mainly consist of a number of colossal buildings on the terrace made of dark-grey marble; there are 20 standing pillars and 40 escalated minarets.

These painful ruins — which remind us of 2,500 years of turbulent periods, monarchies and kings — are transfiguring by a sense of splendor and grief, something which you cannot really feel except by experiencing the site in person. 

Persepolis, which was named a heritage site by UNESCO in 1979 — right after the Islamic revolution of Iran — hosts more than 500,000 visitors annually, most of them from Western Europe and the US.

Kourosh Ziabari and Ahmadreza Tavassoli: Dr. Saba Valadkhan is a world-renowned biomedical scientist and the Assistant Professor of Case Western Reserve University of USA.

After graduating from the Tehran University of Medial Sciences, Saba Valadkhan moved to New York where she could continue her further studies at the Columbia University upon the fellowship which she had been granted from RNA Research Society.

This young Iranian scientist has won several international awards for her effective, determinant contribution to the field of Molecular Biology such as Peter Sajovic Memorial Award, Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award and James Howard McGregor Prize.

In 2005, she was awarded the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) award of Young Scientist of the Year for her breakthrough in understanding the mechanism of spliceosomes which was something unprecedented and innovative until that time.

By developing a new strategy to prevent the occurrence of some disastrous cancer types, she identified and determined a slight and insignificant deficiency in the functionality of DNA strands and found an effective way of solving it.

Following is the text of exclusive interview with Dr. Saba Valadkhan in which a stack of interesting subjects around the details of her latest discovery, scientific community of Iran and the prospect of research in Iran and has been discussed.

Continues here

Read the Interview from “The People’s Voice“, Middle East Youth, Payvand, MediaLeft

The restoration of the tomb of the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, has been completed and its metal scaffolding removed.
After three stages of restoration, the structure stands strong and will not sustain any further damage. The work on the historical site has gained UNESCO approval.

According to manager of the restoration work, Hasan Rahsaz, the restoration and documentation of the process has been carried out with great precision by 8 archeological experts and modern-day equipment.

The first stage of restoration began in 2000 when metal scaffolding was put around the tomb to allow experts to access every inch of the stone exterior to find, document and restore the damage to its 180 bricks and the 11 slabs of stone that make up its roof.
Broken pieces were also gathered and used to rebuild and protect the sections exposed to snow and rain.

In the second stage of the project, cement used for restoration in 1930 was removed and the process of anastylosis of broken and fallen parts began.
The stone parts were then reattached in the Achaemenid style with the help of dovetail joints; laser scanners were used to determine their exact positions.

In the last stage of restoration, the northern and western sides of the tomb were completely cleaned of limestone.

MaulanaNews: The Iranian Poet Mevlana Museum in the central Anatolian city of Konya has been included in the “Virtual Tour of Museums” application initiated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

Virtual museum tours can be undertaken on the ministry’s official Web site: www.kultur.gov.tr. The Web site offers a 360 degree panoramic view of some museums and tourists visiting the site can obtain detailed information about the museums they wish to visit.

Thanks to the newly added panoramic tour of the Mevlana Museum, visitors are able to see all the details of the museum, including the ceiling, walls and historical artifacts. They can also learn which part of the museum they are visiting by clicking the screen as a guide accompanies them.

When compared to the same term last year, the number of visitors to the Mevlana Museum increased by 49.6 percent and reached 205,000 during the period of January to March of this year. Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Mustafa Ç?pan said they received positive reactions to the virtual tour application and added, “In this way we have opened the doors of the Mevlana Museum to people all over the world. We expect the number of visitors to be on the rise thanks to this application.”

The other museums that can be visited virtually on the Web site are the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, the Side Museum and Virtual Music Museum, the Aphrodisias Museum, Hagia Sophia, the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, the Museum of Burdur Archaeology, the Çorum Museum, the Denizli Hierapolis Archaeology Museum, the Divan Literature Museum, the Ephesus Museum, the Gaziantep Museum, the Ertu?rul Gazi Museum, the Göreme Open Air Museum and the Mardin Museum.

Kourosh Ziabari and Ahmadreza Tavassoli: The second anniversary of Anousheh Ansari’s adventurous travel to the spatial station as the first Iranian space explorer passed over with the reticence of global media who have been busy analyzing the very earliest “side effects” of President-elect Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 US Presidential Elections.

In the heat of Ansari’s space voyage, American media broached bunches of controversial issues such as the reluctance of half-blooded astronaut to introduce herself as Iranian or Muslim, but she never found the opportunity to clarify this.Furthermore, most of the newspapers or websites dedicated their conversations to professional and technical matters when interviewing Anousheh Ansari which caused many stories to remain untold.

Following is the text of exclusive interview with the first female private space explorer Anousheh Ansari, the Iranian businesswomen who has perpetuated the name of Iran in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records Book with her everlasting record.

Continues here

You can also read the whole interview here