Festivities
The festivities were opened on 12 October 1971 when the Shah and the Shahbanu paid homage to Cyrus the Great at his mausoleum at Pasargadae. For the next two days, the Shah and his wife greeted arriving guests, often directly at the Shiraz airport. On 14 October, a grand gala dinner took place in the Banqueting Hall in celebration of the birthday of the Shahbanu. Sixty members of royal families and heads of state were assembled at the single large serpentine table in the Banqueting Hall. The official toast was raised with a Dom Perignon Rosé 1959.
The banquet menu was:
- quails' eggs stuffed with golden, Imperial Caspian caviar (the Shah had artichokes as he was allergic to caviar), Champagne and Château de Saran
- mousse of crayfish tails with Nantua sauce, Château Haut-Brion Blanc 1964
- roast saddle of lamb with truffles, Château Lafite Rothschild 1945
- champagne sorbet, Moët et Chandon 1911
- 50 roast peacocks—Iran's ancient national symbol—with restored tail feathers stuffed with foie gras, accompanied by roast quails and a nut and truffle salad Musigny Conte de Vogué 1945
- glazed oporto ring of fresh figs with cream, raspberry champagne sherbet and port, Dom Perignon Rosé 1959 reserve vintage
- mocha coffee
- cognac Prince Eugène
Six hundred guests dined over five and a half hours thus making for the longest and most lavish official banquet in modern history as recorded in successive editions of the Guinness Book of World Records. A son et lumière show and fireworks, accompanied by Iannis Xenakis' specially-commissioned electronic music piece Persepolis concluded the evening. The next day saw a parade of armies of different Iranian empires covering two and half millennia by 1,724 men of the Iranian armed forces, all in period costume. In the evening a less formal "traditional Persian party" was held in the Banqueting Hall as the concluding event at Persepolis.
On the final day, the Shah inaugurated the Shahyad Tower (later renamed the Azadi Tower after the Iranian revolution) in Tehran to commemorate the event. The tower was also home to the Museum of Persian History. In it was displayed the Cyrus Cylinder, which the Shah promoted as "the first human rights charter in history". The cylinder was also the official symbol of the celebrations, and the Shah's first speech at Cyrus' tomb praised the freedom that it had proclaimed, two and a half millennia previously. The festivities were concluded with the Shah paying homage to his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, at his mausoleum.
The event brought together the rulers of two of the oldest extant monarchies, the Shah and Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. By the end of the decade, both monarchies had ceased to exist. Orson Welles said of the event: "This was no party of the year, it was the celebration of 25 centuries!"
Read more about this topic: 2,500 Year Celebration Of The Persian Empire