Azadi Tower

아자디 타워

Tehran's 45 m 'Freedom Tower', designed by Hossein Amanat and inaugurated in 1971 at the city's western gateway, clad in 8,000 blocks of white Isfahan marble. Its four legs sweep up in concave curves to a narrow top block, opened by a great pointed arch whose vault is lined with a turquoise lattice.

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At a glance

Country: Iran
Location: Tehran, Iran
Built: 1971
Height: 45 m
Type: Monument

Quick answers

Where is Azadi Tower?

Azadi Tower is in Tehran, Iran.

When was Azadi Tower built?

Azadi Tower was built in 1971.

How tall is Azadi Tower?

Azadi Tower is about 45 m tall.

Azadi Tower, which means Freedom Tower, is a monument at Azadi Square in Tehran, Iran. It stands about 45 metres tall and is covered in cut white marble, using about 8,000 blocks of stone from Isfahan province. It was completed in 1971 to mark 2,500 years of the Persian Empire, and it once marked the western entrance to the city.

Originally it was called the Shahyad Tower, meaning the Shah's Memorial. It was renamed Azadi after the 1979 revolution. Its shape rises from a wide base to a narrow top, opened by a large pointed arch, and it has become the symbol of Tehran. It is part of the Azadi Cultural Complex, which includes an underground museum.

Designing the tower

The young architect Hossein Amanat won a design competition in 1966. He asked the British firm Arup to help with the structure, because he was impressed by its work on the Sydney Opera House, though some Iranian engineers objected to a foreign firm. Amanat drew on classical Iranian buildings. The main vault is a Sasanian arch, standing for the classical era, and the broken arch above it is a popular medieval form. A network of ribs ties the two together.

Computers were used to work out the tower's complex woven surfaces, which was a new technique at that time.

Marble and money

The stone was found and supplied by Ghanbar Rahimi, known as Iran's Sultan of Stone, and the stonemason Ghaffar Davarpanah supervised the building work. It cost about 6 million dollars, mostly paid by a group of 500 Iranian industrialists.

The tower was inaugurated on 16 October 1971 and opened to the public on 14 January 1972.

What is inside

The Azadi Museum is at the basement level. It shows early objects such as flagstones, gold sheeting and terracotta tablets from Susa covered with cuneiform writing, and a section on the history of photography in Iran. Before 1979 the main display held a copy of the Cyrus Cylinder, whose original is in the British Museum.