Takht-e Soleyman

🕰️When was it built?

People lived on the site in many periods, but it flourished again when the Adur Gushnasp fire temple was built in the Sasanian era. Khosrow I and Khosrow II paid it particular attention. Later the Roman emperor Heraclius attacked it and destroyed the fire temple and parts of the town.

🏛️What was it built for?

The fire temple held religious importance for kings and generals, and the town around it had grown into a religious centre. Halls and palaces, the fire temple and the houses were the three main parts of the Sasanian town. Mobeds, the Zoroastrian priests, lived in the houses here too.

👀What you will see

• In the fire temple area, two domed rooms stood side by side: one for the worship of fire, the other probably for the worship of water.
• East of the fire temple is a square courtyard attributed to a temple of Anahita, with four rectangular columns on each side.
• The columns and walls of the Anahita section are built of thick cut stone, and the vaults are brick.
• Narrow corridors around the courtyard lead to tall, narrow rooms; the east and west rooms open onto the main fire temple courtyard.
• The central courtyard of the Anahita section is split in two by an east–west wall, which changed its open space.

💡Something interesting

Newly crowned Sasanian kings came here on foot to visit the fire temple and for their coronation. This ritual shows that for the court, Adur Gushnasp was no ordinary religious building but was bound up with kingship itself.