The Sa’dabad Cultural-Historical Complex on Tuesday reopened its doors
to the public as some restrictions over the coronavirus pandemic have
been relaxed in Tehran.
According to the National Headquarters
for Coronavirus Control, Tehran province is in the low-risk “yellow”
zone and museums and historical sites across the province could reopen
and resume their activities.
Iran closed cultural heritage
museums and historical sites across the country in a preventive measure
amid fears of coronavirus outbreak last February, but as the coronavirus
lockdown was eased, they were reopened in early May.
Due to a
sharp rise in the number of coronavirus infections and deaths, museums
and all art and cultural centers, universities, schools, seminaries,
English schools, libraries, movie theaters, mosques, beauty salons, and
several other entities went on lockdown during July.
The closure
continued during November over the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In June, Mohammadreza Kargar, the tourism ministry’s director for
museums and historical properties announced that Iranian museums and
historical sites have taken 600 billion rials (about $14.2 million) hit
from the coronavirus outbreak.
If the country was in normal
condition, the museums would host over 25 million visitors, but now they
have faced a huge loss as there is almost no visitor to the museums, he
noted.
In October, Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts
Minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan warned that Iran’s cultural heritage and
tourism would be in a critical situation if the crises caused by the
outbreak of the coronavirus would be continuing.
With the
outbreak of the coronavirus, museums were at the forefront of closures
and for several months now, they have not had any revenue from the sale
of tickets, Mounesan explained.
Meanwhile, the ministry is facing
a shortage of funds in the field of cultural heritage, which causes
problems for maintaining and preserving 34,000 National Heritage
properties as well as 24 UNESCO-tagged sites, the official explained.
It
was estimated that museums would earn about 300 billion rials (about
$7.1 million) in the first quarter of the year, but over the coronavirus
pandemic they did not even come close to this figure, he added.
In
July, Mounesan said that revenues from museums were almost eight
billion rials (about $190,000) during the first three months of the
current Iranian calendar year (started March 20, 2020), a sharp decline
compared to around 300 billion rials (over $7 million) in the same
period last year. Earlier this week, the minister said that Iran’s
tourism has suffered a loss of over 140 trillion rials (about $3.33
billion) since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sprawled
on about 110 hectares of a mountainside parkland in northern Tehran,
the Sadabad Cultural-Historical Complex is used to be a royal summer
residence during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras.
The complex was
initially established and inhabited by some Qajar monarchs in the 19th
century. It has undergone further expansions from the 1920s until the
1979 Islamic Revolution. The site embraces a variety of buildings, some
of which turned to be house museums showcasing a wide range of royal
families’ memorabilia including lavishly-made furniture, dishware,
automobiles, carpets, and miniature paintings.
Persian
