UNESCO has added eight pre-Islamic Iranian archeological sites to its World Heritage List, raising the number of Iran cultural places on the UN agency's list to 24.
The UN agency added the sites, listed as "Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars region (Islamic Republic of Iran)," along with several other locations around the world during its meeting in Bahrain on June 30.
Fars was the cradle of the Sassanid dynasty beginning in the early third century.
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The Sassanids ruled land that at its peak covered areas to the west of Afghanistan to Egypt. The dynasty eventually fell to the Arab conquest under the Umayyad caliphate in the middle of the seventh century.
"These fortified structures, palaces, and city plans date back to the earliest and latest times of the Sassanian Empire," UNESCO said.
Other sites added on June 30 included the Aasivissuit-Nipisat area, Inuit hunting grounds in the Arctic circle in the largest ice-free area in Greenland.
Other sites in India, Japan, South Korea, and Germany were added.
