Sasanian Timeline

4200 BCE – 1221 CE · 5 sites

All sites in this period

Country Record

Longest Continuously Occupied Site in Iran

Susa

4200 BCE – 1218 CE

Ancient Susa, among the world's oldest cities, flourished from 4200 BCE as the Elamite lowland capital and later a ceremonial Achaemenid center, yielding treasures like the Code of Hammurabi stele.

421

ChalcolithicBronze AgeIron Age

The Achaemenid rock-cut tombs and Sasanian reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran

Featured

Continent Record

Oldest Necropolis in Asia

Naqsh-e Rostam

520 BCE – 300 CE

A towering cliff near Persepolis in Iran carved with the rock-cut tombs of four Achaemenid "Great Kings," including Darius the Great, set above a series of monumental reliefs added centuries later by the Sasanian dynasty. Together they compress over a thousand years of Persian imperial art into a single rock face.

311

ClassicalLate Antique

Earthen walls and ruins of the ancient city complex of Merv, Turkmenistan

Featured

Ancient Merv

500 BCE – 1221 CE

One of the greatest oasis cities of Central Asia — successive walled cities of Margiana on the Murghab delta in present-day Turkmenistan, bridging Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sasanian, and Islamic Silk Road empires until Mongol destruction in 1221.

ClassicalHellenisticRoman

The brick vault of Taq Kasra, the great ayvān of Ctesiphon, Iraq

Featured

Country Record

Known by the Most Names in Iraq

Ctesiphon

129 BCE – 637 CE

The Parthian and Sasanian capital on the Tigris south of Baghdad — celebrated for the colossal brick vault of Taq Kasra — is among the most searched late-antique archaeological sites and the administrative twin of Seleucia on the opposite bank.

HellenisticRomanLate Antique

Derbent

600 BCE – 700 CE

Ancient Caspian fortress city with monumental Sasanian walls controlling strategic passage between mountains and sea, continuously inhabited since the mid-first millennium BCE.

322

Iron AgeClassicalHellenistic