"When you see Persepolis for the first time as I did, facing Marvdasht, you are likely to be disappointed but once inside the ruins themselves you are overwhelmed by the still-proud soaring columns, and by the quality and the fresh state of the bas-relief carvings which are certainly among the finest in the history of the world’s art. But mostly you are transfixed by the sudden realization that all this happened 24 centuries ago, and that people from every nation in the known world of the time had stood in the same place and felt the same."