From Palace to Town. Report on the multidisciplinary project carried out by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission on the Persepolis Terrace (Fars, Iran), 2008-2013, 1. Topography, Diagnostic and Conservation.

The project started in 2008 by the Iranian-Italian Archaeological Mission in Fars, “From Palace to Town: An integrated multidisciplinary approach to Persepolis terrace and town”, had two main objectives, respectively in the fields of archaeology and conservation. Even though the focus of the work that was to be started on Persepolis would have shifted from the “Palaces” of the imperial Terrace, which had exclusively attracted the attention of archaeologists in the past, to the inhabited settlement known from the written sources, the “Town”, the urgent needs of conservation on the Terrace, in a multidisciplinary approach of an up-to-date study of the past, were the second objective of the project. The collection of information regarding diagnostic investigations on stone as a basis for subsequent pilot conservation tests on the main problems met on the Persepolis Terrace has represented the first aim of the conservation section of the project, integrated by information on topography and data management. This volume, the first of the series of final reports on the 2008-2013 project “From Palace to Town”, includes four sections: 1 - Topography and GIS; 2 - The Archaeological Relational Database; 3 - Diagnostic on the Persepolis Terrace; 4 - Conservation on the Persepolis Terrace. It makes available the large amount of data collected in these fields, and represents an important contribution to the preservation of the World Heritage Site of Persepolis.