page_title: 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire
section_title: Festivities
hierarchical_section_title: 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire / Festivities
caption_attribution_description: English: Achaemenid soldiers historical parade 2.500 years celebration
context_page_description: The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire, officially known as the 2,500th Year of the Foundation of the Imperial State of Iran, consisted of an elaborate set of festivities that took place on 12–16 October 1971 to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Imperial State of Iran and the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great. The intent of the celebration was to demonstrate Iran's ancient civilization and history and to showcase its contemporary advances under His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah of Iran.
  Some later historians came to think that this excess contributed to events that resulted in the Iranian Revolution and eventual replacement of the Persian monarchy with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, who was supported by a wide range of people, including various leftist and Islamist organizations, and student movements. The event has been described as the most expensive party ever held.
context_section_description: The festivities were opened on 12 October 1971, when the Shah and the Shahbanu paid homage to Cyrus the Great at his mausoleum at Pasargadae. For the next two days, the Shah and his wife greeted arriving guests, often directly at Shiraz's airport. On 14 October, a grand gala dinner took place in the Banqueting Hall in celebration of the birthday of the Shahbanu. Sixty members of royal families and heads of state were assembled at the single large serpentine table in the Banqueting Hall. The official toast was raised with a Dom Perignon Rosé 1959.
  The food and the wine for the celebration were provided by the Parisian restaurant Maxim's.
  Six hundred guests dined over five and a half hours thus making for the longest and most lavish official banquet in modern history as recorded in successive editions of the Guinness Book of World Records. A son et lumière show, the Polytope of Persepolis designed by Iannis Xenakis and accompanied by the specially-commissioned electronic music piece Persepolis concluded the evening. The next day saw a parade of armies of different Iranian empires covering two and half millennia by 1,724 men of the Iranian armed forces, all in period costume. In the evening, a less formal  "traditional Persian party" was held in the Banqueting Hall as the concluding event at Persepolis.
  On the final day, the Shah inaugurated the Shahyad Tower (later renamed the Azadi Tower after the Iranian Revolution) in Tehran to commemorate the event. The tower was also home to the Museum of Persian History. In it was displayed the Cyrus Cylinder, which the Shah promoted as "the first human rights charter in history". The cylinder was also the official symbol of the celebrations, and the Shah's first speech at Cyrus' tomb praised the freedom that it had proclaimed, two and a half millennia previously. The festivities were concluded with the Shah paying homage to his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, at his mausoleum.
  The event brought together the rulers of two of the three oldest extant monarchies, the Shah and Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. Emperor Shōwa of Japan was represented by his youngest brother, Prince Mikasa. By the end of the decade, both the Ethiopian and Iranian monarchies had ceased to exist.
caption: Persian Immortals, as portrayed during the celebrations.
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