Pasargadae Museum Due by 2020

The highly anticipated museum in Pasargadae, a world heritage site in Fars Province, will open at most in three years, a senior official at Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization said.

Speaking to reporters on Monday while visiting the construction site of the museum, Mohammad Hassan Talebian, ICHHTO’s deputy for cultural heritage, said a budget of around 12 billion rials ($317,000) has been allocated to the project, which is expected to be completed “in two to three years”, according to a report on the organization’s official website.

To say progress has been slow is an understatement. The project began before the 1979 Islamic Revolution but was suspended for a very long time for a multitude of reasons, from the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) to shortage of funds that knocked the project down the list of priorities for every government since the revolution.  Work restarted in 2008 with a new plan that included increasing the museum area. Talebian dismissed recent reports that the museum was not a priority of President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, arguing that the allocation of $317,000 for its construction indicates that the government is serious about completing the project.

“Due to financial constraints, the government in the past four years prioritized the completion of projects that had made more than 50% progress, but that is not to say Pasargadae Museum was neglected,” he said. Pasargadae served as the Achaemenid Empire’s capital under Cyrus the Great in 6th century BC. The site, which also hosts the tomb of Cyrus, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 during the World Heritage Committee’s 28th session in Suzhou, China.