
Full text loading...
In this article, I examine the monumentalization of the Pahlavi regime’s sites of political imprisonment and torture in contemporary Tehran, with a focus on the Qasr Garden Museum. The Qasr (palace) edifice was initially constructed as a summer palace under Qajar rule in 1790. The abandoned Qajar palace was then transformed into a prison by the Pahlavi state in 1929, and ironically named the Qasr Prison (Palace Prison). The latest metamorphosis of the old palace occurred in 2012, when the ruined Prison was opened as a museum under the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article addresses the various re-inventions of this historical site by the Pahlavis and the Islamic Republic, and aims to evaluate its role as a trans-functional monumental space and a cultural instrument for both states. The monumental site in this sense is produced through the re-invention of the past, first as a modern disciplinary and then as a cultural instrument.