Iran: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Iran known for?

Iran is known as the heir to Persia, one of the world's oldest civilizations, and as the Islamic Republic of Iran in West Asia. Its tiled mosques are famous. Persian heritage and centuries of settled culture draw travellers to a land that reaches between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf and borders Iraq to the west.

Where is Iran?

Iran is a large country of West Asia, ringed by land and sea borders on almost every side. It touches many neighbours. Iraq lies to the west, with Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, while Turkmenistan sits to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, and Pakistan to the southeast.

The seas close the rest. The Caspian Sea forms the northern edge, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf reach along the south. Those borders enclose one of the largest countries of West Asia.

Iran stretches from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea down to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the south, a span that gives it both a northern seaboard and a southern one. Its reach is vast. Tehran, the capital, lies in the north of the country, the seat around which the 31 provinces of Iran are arranged, and from it the wider land of Persia opens outward toward the borders it keeps with Iraq, Pakistan, and the rest.

What is the history of Iran?

Iran carries one of the longest histories of any country in West Asia, reaching back to the civilization of ancient Persia. Persia gives Iran a very long past. As the heart of the Persian Empire, the land was for many centuries a dominant power across the region, a wellspring of one of the world's great civilizations whose art, language, and learning spread far beyond its borders.

Persia shaped the wider world. The modern state took its present form in the twentieth century. Iran was reconstituted as the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, the constitutional order under which the country is governed from Tehran.

That change came late. Yet it sits atop millennia of earlier history, for the land long known as Persia had already been a centre of civilization in West Asia for centuries before, and the country still carries both names, Iran and Persia, into its identity.

What is Iran like?

Iran is, above all, the land of Persian culture, an inheritance built over thousands of years. Persian is the national language that binds the country together across West Asia, spoken from the northern coast to the southern gulfs. The mosques set the scene.

Iran's tiled mosques are known across the world for their patterned domes and glazed colour, a tradition of craft carried down from the older art of Persia. Faith and language run through daily life. The country follows Shia Islam, and its calendar, law, and public life are shaped by that tradition as the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Persian ties it all together. From the poetry and architecture of old Persia to the mosques of the modern country, Iranian culture reads as a continuous thread across West Asia, one of the world's great civilizations still legible in its language and its art.

What is the climate of Iran?

Iran lies largely in a subtropical band north of the equator, and its weather turns on the seasons rather than on any maritime evenness. The warm months bring parching heat. Much of the country bakes through the warm months, while the coasts along the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf feel the sea's hand, giving Iran a range of conditions from its northern shore to its southern gulf.

How do you get to Iran?

Iran is entered by most travellers through Tehran, the capital and the country's chief point of entry in West Asia. Air links lead the way. Overland routes cross the borders it shares with Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan, while sea approaches reach the Caspian Sea in the north or the Persian Gulf in the south, though the capital remains the usual first step into Iran.