Persepolis — City of Wonders

Darius the Great began it. Xerxes continued it. Artaxerxes completed it. Persepolis — the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire — was built over a hundred and fifty years to be the most magnificent city in the world, receiving delegations from every nation in the empire who came each year to pay tribute and renew their loyalty. Its Gate of All Nations declared that Persia governed a world of peoples, not a world of subjects. Alexander the Great burned it in 330 BCE in an act of deliberate revenge. Its ruins are still more beautiful than most cities standing today.

These signs carry the bull capital, the relief carvings of tribute-bearers, the Gate of All Nations, and the staircase that remembered every foot that climbed it.