Tehran is not only the capital of Iran and the province with the same name, but the economic and political capital where modern buildings and skyscrapers are presumed in the northern part of the city.
Considered as one of the largest cities in the world, Tehran has more than six hundred square kilometers of surface and according to the official numbers of the year 2010 has more than eight million inhabitants.
According to the studies the name of Tehran (Tehran in English), is composed of “Tah” (final) and “Ran” (mountain slope) which means “end of the mountain slope” and identifies the geographical situation of the city. This name is due to the existence of the Alborz mountains in the north of the city whereby Tehran is one thousand two hundred above sea level (one thousand two hundred meters in the center and one thousand seven hundred meters in the north of the city) .
The origin of Tehran is mainly related to the historic city of Rayy, located 8 kilometers southwest of the capital. Rayy was one of the cities where one of the twelve sacred squares created by Ahura Mazda was located. Later and with the advance of time and experience different stories from the Zoroastrians to the Qayar dynasty on March 12, 1786 Tehran was chosen as the capital of the Persian kingdom by Agha Mohammad Khan Qayar, the first king of the dynasty. During the reign of Qayar the great fortified royal neighborhood called the "Arg" was built where the grand bazaar of Tehran, Golestan Palace and etc. are currently located, under the order of King Fath Ali Qayar. The constructions did not end there and were expanded to the northern areas of Tehran where the royal palaces of Niavaran and Sadabad were built where dynasties of the ancient Persian empire, Qayar and Pahlavi, were last two days. During the reign of Pahlavi great progress was made in the reform and establishment of buildings and symbols of Tehran to make it a modern city. During the reign of the first Pahlavi, Reza Shah, the University of Tehran was established, King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi played an essential role in the preparation of the city's infrastructure, which is still essential despite the fact that the population has multiplied during the last decades.
In recent years Tehran has become a huge metropolis where the city limits are difficult to recognize. The tall buildings, huge shopping malls with movie theaters, fancy restaurants, galleries and exhibitions of prestigious artists, state-of-the-art cars are proof that Tehran is a modern city and different from the rest of Iran's cities. Due to the existence of government buildings, headquarters of giant companies and the most important factories in Iran, Tehran is now a city with a lot of money and people movement.
The weather in Tehran is very variant where you can notice low temperatures of minus fifteen degrees at the end of January and high temperatures of up to forty-five degrees in August. The humidity is medium and it usually rains a lot during spring and autumn. Winter is when it usually snows and if not snow the cold is quite annoying.
Tehran has a seven-line metro network expanded to many areas of the city and also has bus services with exclusive lines to expedite transport and reduce traffic. The land connection with other cities is made through the roads of Qom, Saveh, Semnan, Qazvin, Chalus, Firoozkooh and also has a train line with destinations of up to two thousand kilometers (eg Kerman) through many cities. Although the trains are not yet high speed but they are usually one of the means of transport with fewer accidents in Iran. The bus stations where most buses usually depart are Beyhaqi station (known as Argentina), the west station (Azadi) and the south station.
Currently Tehran has two huge airports, one serves as a domestic airport, called Mehrabad, with more than eighteen million annual passengers and another international airport, called Tehran International Airport (IATA Code: IKA), with more than nine million passengers Annual located thirty kilometers south of Tehran on the Qom highway. The most recently made flights to and from the international airport are Iran Air, Mahan, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, Emirates, Air Arabia, Oman Air and etc.
.jpg "National Museum of Iran")
.jpg "Niavaran Complex")