Tehran apartment turns into tiny museum of the sixties
A private collector in Tehran has turned his own apartment into a museum of the sixties, Mehr reported on Wednesday.
For years, Reza Samai has collected a variety of vintage objects mostly from the 1960s in his small home east of Tehran, and now he has turned it into a museum gallery for showing his collections. Rather than throw away old electronics, he has repaired them so that they now make up a significant portion of his collection. Furthermore, he has put on show some objects with over 100 years of age. Despite being registered by the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department of Tehran province, the museum gallery cannot be open to the public because it is set within a private apartment. It has been on the agenda of the tourism ministry to help establish such house museums for years. As part of its efforts, the ministry encourages the country’s collectors with valuable collections to keep and register those objects even at home with permission from the ministry. Recently, private and home museums have increased by 50 percent as a result of the project. Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations, embracing settlements dating back to 4000 BC. It also hosts some of the world’s oldest cultural monuments including bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, madrasas, gardens, rich natural, rural landscapes as well as 26 UNESCO World Heritage sites. The name of Iran, formerly known as Persia, mostly conjures up the first Persian Empire, ruled by the Achaemenids (ca. 550 – 330 BC) and sites such as Pasargadae and Persepolis. However, there are tens of prehistorical sites as the Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchestan, Tepe Sialk in Kashan, Susa, and Chogha Zanbil in the Khuzestan province, and Ecbatana in Hamedan which predate the Achaemenid period. From a wider point of view, Iranian history can be divided into Pre-Islamic and Islamic eras. The Medes unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Islamic conquest of Persia (633–656) that put an end to the mighty Sassanid Empire (224–651) was a turning point in the history of the nation.