The Prison of Time: Tehran’s Qasr Prison Museum as a Transfunctional Monument

Tehran, Iran—February 12, 1979: under a photograph of the entrance to Qasr prison, an article in Ittila’at newspaper offers a minute-by-minute report on the “fall of the regime,” including the seizing of the capital’s three main prisons by armed protestors. Responding to a reporter’s question about the future of the Prisons, notorious as the primary detention centers for opponents of the Shah’s regime, a former political prisoner stated: “The torture rooms and the isolation cells should be preserved as they are, and be opened to public viewing like Bastille prison in France, so that the people can see the catastrophic past with their own eyes.” Focusing on Qasr prison museum—initially constructed as a palace under Qajar rule, which was then transformed into a prison under the Pahlavi state—this paper addresses the relatively new phenomenon of the prison museum in Iran and aims to evaluate this new form of transfuntional monumental space. By dealing with the nation’s recent history, these transformations serve several functions for the Iranian state: they help to ensure the state’s legitimacy by publicizing the disappearance of political prisons, and therefore of political opposition; at the same time, they display the freedom of speech and critical political activity. But these transformations are not only physical; in the way they are managed, in the attempt at their sacralization, and in the carefully observed codes of conduct, these intricately arranged monumental sites are caught between being public and private, exhibiting and hiding, remembering and forgetting.