ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a little-known and still unfinished museum in the World Heritage Site of Pasargadae in southern Iran. The site museum exemplifies the local process of adaptation and appropriation, and this merits its consideration as part of Pasargadae's heritage. Two features of Pasargadae in particular, the Royal Gardens and the tomb of Cyrus are important in relation to the design of the site museum, both having informed the concept of the complex. Like the Pasargadae Museum, it combined ancient and Islamic-era building motifs, such as the Ayvan (Iwan) and pointed arch, while the tower marks the axial crossing point, in the tradition of the Persian garden. The Pasargadae Museum has an added significance inasmuch as, unlike the corresponding building at Persepolis the other most important Achaemenid site in the region it represents one of the first site museums designed by a locally-trained Iranian architect.
