A Palace Turned Prison: A Look Inside Tehran’s Qasr Prison Museum

Updated: 8 July 2019

The name is comprised of words that normally don’t belong together: Bâgh Muze Zendân-e Qasr. “Garden, Museum, Prison, Castle.” Qasr Prison Museum had long been on my Tehran bucket list. I was curious to discover what lies behind the walls of this palace turned prison. I was eager to hear stories from former inmates who lead the tours. But whenever I suggested the idea of visiting to my friends, I was met with groans. So one Thursday, I set out to explore it on my own.

A brief history of Qasr Prison

Today, museum visitors begin their tour in the same place that inmates once arrived: zire hasht (under the eight), an octagonal, domed area on the bottom floor. Our tour guide ran down the steps, welcomed the four of us waiting, and began talking faster than I could keep up with. He’d clearly given this spiel many times. Qasr (“castle” in Persian) was initially built as a Qajar-era palace with extensive garden grounds in 1790. Neglect ran it to ruins, and in 1929 during the Pahlavi era, it was repurposed as two prisons: criminal and political. The architect commissioned with the task was Nikolai Markov, a Georgian who had settled in Iran. Qasr remained a prison for decades until it permanently closed down and then reopened in 2012 as a museum and sculpture garden. (More recently, it has served as one of the filming locations of Shahrzad, the wildly popular romantic, historical drama set around the 1953 coup d’état.)

The origin of a Persian idiom

You may be familiar with Iranian qanât, an ancient network of underground tunnels that carried water to villages and farms. In the past, Tehran also sourced its water from qanât, each of which had a name. There were two in particular that ran under Qasr Prison and provided prisoners with cool drinking water: Mobârak Âbâd and Mokhles Âbâd. When prisoners arrived zire hasht, they surrendered their belongings, were perhaps given a drink of water from the qanât, and then taken to their cells.

“And that’s why to this day,” the guide continued, “when someone is sent to prison, in Persian we say “rafteh âb-e khonak bokhore.” (He’s gone to drink cool water.)

Qasr Prison zurkhâneh

The highlight of my 2014 visit to Yazd was the zurkhâneh, a traditional Persian “gym” of sorts (and a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage). So you can imagine my surprise (and delight) to find out that the prison had its own zurkhâneh. Only those in the criminal prison were allowed privileges to use it. Today, it’s still a working zurkhâneh that gives regular performances to the public. Since I’m ever so slightly obsessed with all things zurkhâneh (just check here and here), my one and only question was, “Are women allowed to attend the performances?”

The guide smiled. “This is one of the few zurkhâneh in Iran that does permit women to attend.” And just like that, I added a new item to my Tehran bucket list.

Markov Museum

What’s known today as the Markov Museum was once the criminal prison. It was built such that it would disorient inmates who tried to escape. And as we made our way through, it becomes increasingly evident just how confusing it would have been.

We passed exhibitions dedicated to Iran’s history in relation to the construction of Qasr. There was even symbolic contemporary artwork scattered around the complex. We walked down a few halls with prison cells that had been reconstructed as representative cells giving a brief account of their former occupants.

Famous names

Asghar Ghâtel

The son of a road bandit known for attacking caravans, Asghar the Murderer was Iran’s first serial killer reported in the 20th century. As a child, he and his family moved to Baghdad where he assaulted, raped, and murdered numerous teenage boys. He eventually escaped to Tehran where he continued his killing spree before he was caught and imprisoned in Qasr. After confessing to the murder of 25 people in Iraq and a further 8 in Iran, he was executed.

Lawrence of Arabia

The serial killer was new for me, but I peeked into another cell to find a more familiar face. Cardboard cutouts of Lawrence of Arabia was a random sight to see. He was evidently imprisoned in Qasr for a short while.

Abdolhossein Teymourtash

In a nutshell, Abdolhossein Teymourtash was the first Minister of Court during the Pahlavi dynasty. After eventually being dismissed by Reza Shah, he was sent to Qasr where he is believed to have been killed by the infamous prison physician, Dr. Ahmad Ahmadi, known for administering lethal air injections. 

Other names

A couple of well-known Iranian clerics held in the political prison were Ayatollah Taleghani and Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani (former President of Iran who served for 2 terms and passed away in early 2017). Poet Ahmad Shamlou was also imprisoned in Qasr. In fact, there’s a cell with images of progressive writers, poets, clerics, and politicians considered dissidents before the Revolution who were once locked up here.

(Incidentally, one of the men in our tour group also did time here. He said he decided to stop by that day “to see what they had done with the place.”)

We walked towards the political prison where our guide said goodbye.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour so far. Now I’ll leave you in the hands of a former inmate who will continue from here.”

In the words of a former inmate

We waited briefly in the courtyard when out walked a petite lady with glasses, her headscarf pinned tightly under her chin.

“My name is Jazayeri,” she told us. (Iranians usually introduce themselves by their last names.) “I’ll be leading you through the political prison.”

Ms. Jazayeri recounted haunting tales of inhumane conditions during her stay at Qasr. Winter nights so cold that you’d wake up from muscle pain; summer nights so chokingly hot and humid you felt suffocated. Cells were often overcrowded to the point that cellmates had to take turns sleeping on the ground.

“But we were subjected more to intense interrogation and psychological pressure than torture,” Ms. Jazayeri continued. “The torture here wasn’t as bad as it was in Ebrat Prison. But we still had people like Manouchehri.”

That name suddenly conjured up images of the monster-like wax figure of Manouchehri and his brutal torture methods I had seen in Ebrat Prison Museum a year earlier. Manouchehri was one of the SAVAK’s (the Shah’s secret police) most notorious interrogators and torturers. He is said to have committed suicide in London a few years ago.

“Have any of you been to Ebrat?” she asked.

“I have,” I said. “That’s how I recognized the name Manouchehri that you just mentioned.”

“Yes, exactly. He was also one of my interrogators,” she said and quickly turned around to continue the tour.

We entered a drab room with concrete walls and iron columns. This was where friends and family could visit inmates. The audio playing simulated the racket of prisoners and relatives yelling across the distance to hear each other. It reminded me of that scene in Brokedown Palace where Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale are in a Thai prison and one of their dads visits. They are on opposite sides of a creek and have to shout from behind a fence. The distance here wasn’t nearly as wide, but wide enough.

We then entered solitary confinement cells. “The red lights inside are for the tourists’ sake,” Ms. Jazayeri noted. “You can go inside and close the doors to get a feel of what it was like.”

I walked in and closed the door behind me. The red light turned off, leaving me in pitch darkness. I felt around for the four walls surrounding me and imagined having to endure this hell in filthy, damp conditions for over 24 hours. I couldn’t tolerate it for longer than a few seconds.

Ms. Jazayeri told us of slightly better times when the women in the prison were allowed to spend nights in the courtyard.

“Nobody would sleep those nights, though. We’d just gaze up at the stars and the moon in awe,” she said as tears filled her eyes.

We finished the tour in front of framed mugshots of the inmates, including several women (there were approximately 1,000 female prisoners). Though the women’s section has mostly been destroyed, a couple of the prison’s wings are named after the most well known female inmates.

My thoughts on the tour

When it was over, I strolled through the shady recreational area admiring the sculptures, but mostly, I was lost in my thoughts. I couldn’t help but wonder how those former inmates felt coming back to this place and giving tours. Maybe it was a form of therapy. If anything, it’s definitely a testament to the human spirit.

But did they ever think that one day, this place would be a museum and sculpture garden? A place where people would voluntarily come to enjoy the park grounds? That it would house trendy cafes where young Iranian hipsters would come to see and be seen while sipping fancy Italian coffees in between cigarette puffs? It was strange.

I can understand some people’s reluctance to visit such a place. I know all the arguments against it without anyone telling me. But at the end of the day, it’s part of our history, and it’s worth a visit in my opinion. 

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