Sistani's House, one of the central buildings in Bam Citadel (aka Arg-e Bam) in the southeastern province of Kerman, will again be opened to visitors in late February after a decade-long restoration project, a top heritage official said.
It is one of the dilapidated mansions in the ancient complex, Mehr News Agency reported.
"According to the latest report released by the public relations of provincial office of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, the Germany-based Dresden University of Technology joined Iranian heritage authorities in 2008 in a project to restore the age-old mansion," said Afshin Ebrahimi, the head of Arg-e Bam World Heritage Base.
"Now that the renovation is carried out, the mansion is expected to reopen, in the presence of Michael Klor-Berchtold, German ambassador to Iran," he added.
Located in Bam City, Arg-e Bam was once the largest adobe building in the world but was almost entirely razed to the ground by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake on December 26, 2003, which killed between 32,000 people.
Since then, a number of measures have been made to repair at least a small part of the natural calamity's impacts.
Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2004, Arg-e Bam is one of Iran’s 19 world heritage sites.
The origin of this enormous structure on the historical Silk Road can be traced to the Achaemenid period (6th to 4th centuries BC). The heyday of the citadel was from the 7th to 11th centuries, as it is located at the crossroads of important trade routes and known for the production of silk and cotton garments.
