Tehran
Iran's capital below the Alborz Mountains
Tehran climbs the southern slopes of the Alborz Mountains, a high, sprawling capital of nearly ten million where the air, the wealth, and the politics all shift as you move uphill. Cooler, leafier districts of the affluent north look down across a vast grid of avenues toward the hazy, hotter, working-class south. Snow-capped peaks loom over the city in winter, and the slopes draw skiers within an hour of the downtown traffic.
The city sits on a sloping plain at roughly twelve hundred metres above sea level, pressed against the Alborz range whose Mount Tochal rises directly behind it. That elevation gives Tehran a continental climate of cold winters and hot, dry summers, while its position in a tectonically active region leaves it exposed to serious earthquake risk. Air pollution, trapped against the mountains, is among the city's most stubborn problems.
A modest village in the shadow of the ancient city of Ray, Tehran rose to prominence in 1786 when Agha Mohammad Khan of the Qajar dynasty chose it as his capital, and it has governed Iran ever since. The twentieth century brought rapid modernization under the Pahlavi shahs, the upheaval of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and explosive growth. Today it is the political, economic, and cultural center of Iran, a city of universities, bazaars, contemporary art, and the seat of the Islamic Republic.