TEHRAN (IFILM) -- Azarbaijan Museum is the second archeology museum of the country after the National Museum of Iran, offering a rich and prolific collection of artifacts that were discovered 7,000 years ago.
Located in Tabriz, the capital city of the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan, the museum is a great place where you can see artifacts belonging to various historical periods of Iran.
The objects on display have been collected from different parts of Iran, including Neyshabur, Jiroft, Shahr-e Rey, Qazvin, Tabriz and Maragheh.
Visiting the museum what might strike you most is the fact that some 7,000 years ago, when there was no pottery wheel, Iranian artists made such fine pottery vessels decorated with symmetrical lines.
The 60-year-old museum, one of the oldest the country, was designed by Andre Godard, a French archeologist and architect. It is a simple and magnificent three-floor building with four large halls.
According to Seyyed Ali Razavi, an expert working in the museum, the dyes that were used to paint dishes 7,000 years ago were made from vegetables.
He pointed out mineral dyes were also used for the purpose in the following century, adding a number of vessels found in Shahr-e Sukhteh (Burnt City), an ancient archeological site in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, were painted in this way.