Azadi Tower illuminated at night in Tehran, Iran

Why Tehran’s Azadi Tower Was Originally Called Shahyad

At Tehran’s western gateway, a white marble arch rises from a broad oval plaza. Today almost everyone calls it Borj-e Azadi—the Azadi Tower—but that was not its first name. When the monument opened in 1971, it was the Shahyad Tower. The change from Shahyad to Azadi is more than a new label: it compresses a royal commemoration, a revolution, and decades of public memory into two words.

The tower is often treated as a simple city icon. Its history is richer. Architect Hossein Amanat designed it as a modern structure that could speak in several architectural languages at once, joining pre-Islamic forms, Islamic geometry, and contemporary engineering. That mixture helps explain why the building survived the political order that commissioned it and became one of Tehran’s most recognizable symbols.

What does “Azadi” mean?

Azadi (آزادی) means “freedom” or “liberty” in Persian. The monument’s current Persian name is Borj-e Azadi (برج آزادی), or “Freedom Tower,” and the surrounding space is Meydan-e Azadi, Azadi Square.

The name dates from the political transformation of 1979. After the Iranian Revolution ended the Pahlavi monarchy, a monument whose name explicitly honored the shah could not keep the same official identity. Shahyad Tower became Azadi Tower, while the structure itself remained in place.

What did “Shahyad” mean?

The original name was Borj-e Shahyad (برج شهیاد), usually translated as “Shah’s Memorial” or “King’s Memorial.” The name joined shah, meaning king, with the idea of remembrance. It reflected the building’s commission under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and its connection to the celebrations marking 2,500 years of Persian monarchy.

Amanat won the national design competition while he was a young architecture graduate from the University of Tehran. The project was completed in 1971. According to the Contemporary Architecture of Iran, the tower stood at the entrance to the capital and was intended to give modern Tehran a monumental gateway with a distinctly Iranian identity.

The original political message was unmistakable, but the design was never merely a portrait of the monarchy in stone. Amanat built a much longer history into its curves. That is one reason the public could reinterpret it after the revolution instead of simply abandoning it.

How the architecture combines different eras

The tower is about 45 meters high, yet its sweeping base makes it feel larger from ground level. Its central opening is the key to the design. The broad parabolic arch recalls monumental pre-Islamic Iranian forms, including the great Sasanian arch at Ctesiphon. Above and within it, pointed and interlacing arches evoke Islamic architecture.

The Visit Iran cultural heritage guide describes the main arch as Sasanian-inspired, the parallel bases as recalling Achaemenid design, and the upper arch as Islamic. ArchDaily’s architectural history likewise emphasizes the meeting of the parabolic arch associated with Ctesiphon and pointed Islamic arches.

The surface makes that historical blend feel modern rather than archaeological. White marble from the Isfahan region covers a reinforced-concrete structure. The stone blocks form a widening geometric pattern as they climb, while the ribs beneath the arch create a dramatic view for anyone passing through. Computers helped calculate the complex curves—an unusually advanced design process for Iran at the time.

The surrounding plaza is part of the composition, not empty leftover space. Its fountains, lawns, and geometry reinterpret the Persian garden at an urban scale. Below the monument is a cultural complex with exhibition and museum spaces, so the building is both a landmark seen from a distance and a place visitors can enter.

Why the tower outgrew its first name

Buildings do not choose their political meanings; people keep assigning them. Shahyad Tower was conceived within a royal national narrative, but the same plaza later became a setting for demonstrations, ceremonies, public gatherings, and everyday movement through the city. The new name, Azadi, attached the monument to a different political vocabulary.

The shift also created a useful distinction. “Shahyad” refers most precisely to the tower’s original commission and pre-1979 history. “Azadi Tower” is the correct contemporary name. Searching both names, however, reveals the full story: the design belongs to one period, while its public life extends far beyond it.

That adaptability is not accidental. Amanat has described the tower as modern architecture expressed through an older Iranian language. In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, he reflected on designing it as a young architect and on rebuilding his life and practice in Canada after leaving Iran. The architect’s own diaspora story now forms another layer around a building meant to summarize Iranian identity.

A Tehran landmark in diaspora memory

For many Iranians abroad, Azadi Tower functions less like an abstract national emblem and more like a shorthand for Tehran. It appears in family photographs, old postcards, television images, and memories of the road toward the city’s former main airport. Some remember it as Shahyad, others only as Azadi, and many use both names depending on the period they are discussing.

No single emotional meaning applies to an entire diaspora. The tower can call up nostalgia, political disagreement, architectural pride, distance, or several of those feelings at once. Its strength as a symbol lies precisely in that complexity: it remains recognizable without requiring everyone to agree on what it represents.

The same relationship between place and memory appears along another Tehran axis. Our guide to why Valiasr Street’s plane trees matter explores how an everyday city landscape can become an enduring cultural reference.

Carrying the landmark into everyday life

Architecture becomes personal through small acts: sketching a building, writing down a family story, or carrying an image that starts a conversation. The Azadi Tower spiral notebook turns the Tehran landmark into a practical ruled journal for notes, memories, Persian-language practice, or schoolwork.

Whether you call it Azadi or remember it first as Shahyad, the tower is not frozen in 1971. Its architecture draws on centuries of Iranian design, its name records a political rupture, and its ongoing public life keeps giving the monument new meanings.

Sources and image credit

Featured image: Azadi Tower illuminated at night in Tehran, Iran, photographed by Sanazsaeedi on February 23, 2017. The unchanged photograph is available from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Retour au blog