The ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in southwestern Iran, built from around 518 BCE and burned by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. Its carved reliefs of subject peoples bringing gifts to the king turned an empire of two dozen nations into a single sculptural image of order, and its ruins became a charged symbol of the ancient Persian past and modern Iranian identity.
The reliefs show no battles. Up the great staircase of Persepolis march delegations from across the empire — Bactrians with a camel, Nubians with ivory, Armenians with a horse — each people carrying gifts toward an unseen king. There is no conquest in the stone, only order. Then, in 330 BCE, the man who had conquered the empire those carvings celebrated set the palaces on fire. Why burn the most beautiful monument your defeated enemy ever built?