Qualla: Kermanshah

Kermanshah: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The rock reliefs at Taq-e Bostan were carved around the 4th century CE, Sasanian kings immortalizing themselves in the living cliff. Sixteen centuries later, the carvings still stare down at the spring-fed pool below, watching Kermanshah sprawl outward through its mountain valley. This city in western Iran occupies a landscape that humans have never really left. Paleolithic stone tools found in the surrounding caves place continuous habitation here among the longest anywhere in the Zagros range. What the Sasanian emperors chose to celebrate in stone -- royal hunts, coronations, the favor of the gods -- was already ancient ground.

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Kermanshah: Empires Written in Stone

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two sites define Kermanshah's claim on deep history. Bisotun, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, features a massive rock relief commissioned by Darius the Great around 520 BCE. Carved high into a limestone cliff, the trilingual inscription -- in Old Persian, Elamite, and ...

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Kermanshah: Depths Below the Surface

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kermanshah Province hides as much underground as it displays above. Prav Cave, located in the mountains between Taq-e Bostan and Bisotun, plunges to extreme depths and contains glaciers and a 762-meter-deep valley threaded with underground streams. Quri Qaleh cave, 92 kilometers ...

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Kermanshah: Floating Islands and Mountain Marshes

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Talab-e Hashilan, a 1,500-hectare marsh 32 kilometers from the city, contains something genuinely strange: tiny floating islands. These natural platforms of matted vegetation drift across the wetland's surface, sheltering roughly 200 species of birds among their plant cover. The ...

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Kermanshah: Kurdish Craft and Daily Bread

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kermanshah is a Kurdish-speaking city where cultural identity lives in the tangible. Giveh, the handwoven cotton shoe traditional to the mountainous regions of western Iran, is still produced here and in nearby Paveh and Harsin. The shoe's upper is woven from thread -- once wool ...

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