Dismay as ancient heritage sites across Iran damaged in US-Israel bombing

Golestan Palace world heritage site in Tehran and palace in Isfahan harmed despite Unesco sending coordinates

The governor of the historic Iranian city of Isfahan has accused the US and Israel of a “declaration of war on a civilisation” as heritage sites across the country suffer damage in their bombing campaign.

The most serious confirmed damage to date has been to Tehran’s Golestan Palace, dating to the 14th century, and the 17th-century Chehel Sotoon Palace in Isfahan.

Judging from videos and public statements, neither historic building was hit by a missile directly but the shock wave from nearby blasts and possibly some missile debris shattered glass and brought down tiles and masonry.

Video from the scene showed that Golestan Palace’s celebrated hall of mirrors had been shattered, with shards of intricate mirrorwork scattered across its floor.

The palace is a world heritage site under the protection of the UN’s cultural body, Unesco, which issued a statement of concern after it was damaged on 2 March, saying it had “communicated to all parties concerned the geographical coordinates of sites on the world heritage list”.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, criticised Unesco for not being more vociferous, saying on social media: “Its silence is unacceptable.”

Araghchi blamed the damage on Israel, who he accused of “bombing Iranian historical monuments dating as far back as the 14th century”. “It’s natural that a regime that won’t last a century hates nations with ancient pasts,” he added on X.

One of the damaged sites was Falak-ol-Aflak Castle in the city of Khorramabad, in Lorestan province. According to the head of the province’s heritage department, Ata Hassanpour, a strike hit the castle’s perimeter on Sunday, destroying his department’s offices as well as adjacent archaeological and anthropological museums, and injuring five members of staff.

“Fortunately, the main structure of Falak-ol-Aflak Castle was not damaged,” Hassanpour said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging platform.

Cultural treasures in Kurdistan province in north-west Iran were also affected, according to local media. InSanandaj, the country’s second biggest Kurdish city, reports said the 19th-century Salar Saeed and Asef Vaziri mansions, which serve as Kurdish museums and heritage sites, had suffered damage to their doors and intricate stained-glass windows.

In the past few days, there have been major explosions in the centre of Isfahan, Iran’s capital in three historical eras, where much of the architecture dates back to the Safavid dynasty era, from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Chehel Sotoon suffered the worst impact but broken windows and doors, as well as dislodged tilework, have been reported in the Ali Qapu Palace and several mosques around the vast Naqsh-e Jahan Square. Videos filmed by residents from inside the square showed plumes of smoke rising from nearby airstrikes.

The Isfahan governor, Mehdi Jamalinejad, said the damage had been inflicted even after coordinates of the historic sites had been circulated among the warring parties and after blue shield signs – denoting historical treasures under the 1954 Hague convention for the protection of cultural objects in war – had been put on the roofs of important buildings.

“Isfahan is not an ordinary city, it’s a museum without a roof,” Jamalinejad said in a speech posted on social media. “In none of the previous eras, not in the Afghan wars, not in the Moghul conquest, not even during the ‘sacred defence’ [the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war] was this ever done.”

“This is a declaration of war on a civilisation,” he added. “An enemy that has no culture pays no heed to symbols of culture. A country that has no history has no respect for signs of history. A country that has no identity sets no value for identity.”

An Iranian geologist who worked in Isfahan for many years said in a message forwarded to the Guardian that the ancient capital was particularly vulnerable. “Isfahan has long been attacked from below, by land subsidence that is destroying the Safavid-era structures, and now from the above, by the Americans,” the geologist said. “Isfahan seems to have fewer friends than ever today.”

The US Committee of the Blue Shield, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to upholding the Hague convention, issued a statement saying that Iran’s historic sites “belong not only to the Iranian people, but to all of humanity”.

The organisation said it was “disturbed” by the US defence secretary’s declaration on the third day of the war that there would be no “stupid” rules of engagement, and warned that ignoring international and US laws on the conduct of hostilities could lead to the “commission of war crimes”.

“The destruction of cultural heritage is irreversible,” the statement said. “It erases identity, history, and the shared memory of civilisations. No military or political objective justifies the wilful or negligent destruction of humanity’s common inheritance.”