Pasargadae, the capital of Cyrus the Great (559–530 B.C.), is also the earliest known significant settlement of the Persians, a people who rose from obscurity to far-flung dominion in the short span of two decades. Here Persia entered the world stage, here Achaemenian art took shape and here Cyrus, founder of the Persian empire, was buried.

As the crow flies, Pasargadae lies 40 km north-east of Persepolis and 90 km north-east of Shīrāz. The site occupies a wide grassy plain, the Dasht-i Murghāb, ringed by mountains and watered by the perennial stream of the Pulvār. The valley floor has a height of 1,900 m (6,200 feet) and even in high summer the nights are cool (Map 1).

Up to half a century ago the ruins of Pasargadae lay squarely in the path of the main highway from Fārs to the north. For early travellers from Shīrāz the approach lay through a spectacular wooded gorge, the Tang-i Bulāghī. At the narrow northern exit of the pass, where a bend of the Pulvār sweeps against a cliff face, the ancient highway occupies a bold rock-cutting 30 m above the river-bed and more than 250 m in length. Long raking chisel marks on the rock faces on each side of the road illustrate the hardness of the local limestone and the extent of the labour involved. No exact date for the passage is known though the beginning of the work may well date back to the main period of construction at Pasargadae in the second half of the 6th century B.C.