The Most Expensive Party Ever

So, you know how sometimes as a kid you would throw a big party and then your parents would get angry and ground you? I definitely do because I threw tons of super insane parties in high school with my hundreds of friends who all said I was the coolest. 

Well today’s story is kind of like that, except instead of me throwing a super-real party it was the Shah of Iran, and instead of my parents getting mad it was the people of Iran, and instead of grounding him, they deposed him and replaced his government. 

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This is the story of the world’s most expensive party. Back in 1971, the Shah of Iran thought to himself, “hey, we should do something nice for the people of Iran, like throw a big party for me.” And then some other people, probably, were like, “can the people of Iran go to the party?” and then the Shah was like “no.” 

Shah of Iran

And then people were like “how much will this party for you cost?” And the Shah was like, “$22 million.” And then people were like “what if instead of doing that, you spent that $22 million helping the people of Iran.” And then the Shah was like, “but the party will have cake.” And so the Shah decided to throw the party. 

They decided to call the party دوهزارو پانصدمین سال بنیانگذاری شاهنشاهی ایران, which I can’tread, but which I assumed translates to “Spending $22 Million on a Party For Yourself When Your Economy Isn’t Doing Great Seems Like A Bad Idea,” but Google tells me it actually means“2,500th Year of Foundation of Imperial State of Iran,” a reference to the founding of the First Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. 

Now if you’re a maths whiz, you may have realised that 1971 was actually 2,521 years after 550 BC, but shh, shh, shh. This is the kind of leader nit picking that leads to you accidentally tripping and falling out of a fifth story window, so shush it. 

The ancient city of Persepolis

So, the party took place here, at the ruins of the ancient city of Persepolis and you might be thinking, “how are you going to have a party in the middle of ruins? What are you going to do, build an entire temporary miniature city luxurious enough to host the leaders of the world?” 

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said the Shah, and so, in addition to significant improvements to the local airport and highway, a city was built. It was called a tent city, but the tents were tents in the same way that Shake Shacks are shacks—they weren’t. 

They were more like little luxury apartments, and 50 of them were built, arranged in a star around a fountain and complete with telephones which each provided direct lines to the home country of each guest because that was something you needed 90 or 200 or however many years back 1971 was. 

Tent City

The village also included a “Tent of Honor” for receiving the guests, and a 68 by 24 meter Banquet Hall, and the whole thing was designed by a Parisian interior design firm called Maison Jansen—in fact, a decent amount of the event’s cost came from the Shah’s penchant for having high-end Parisian designers create nearly everything for the event.

 

Banquet Hall

There was dinnerware from Limoges, linens by Port hault, and uniforms by Lanvin—all brands that are so fancy that you’ve likely never even heard of because you aren’t a soon-to-be-deposed Iranian Shah. 

The festivities began on October 12, 1971, when the Shah visited Cyrus the Great’s tomb here, in Pasargadae, followed by two days spent greeting dignitaries from around the world, including royalty, presidents, and Prime ministers from nearly all of the world’s major nations. 

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Among the few nations who didn’t send their very tippy-top people was the US, who sent Vice President Spiro Agnew instead of Nixon,because he was busy being about to do Watergate, and the UK who, for security reasons, didn’t send Queen Elizabeth and instead sent Prince Philip and Princess Anne. 

In case you were worried about Prince Philip having to walk around on his bad knee, don’t be: the Shah had arranged for 250 red Mercedes-Benz limousines to be around at all times to transport the guests. That’s so many more red Mercedes-Benz limousines than the average person has, which makes this interesting. 

The big kickoff came at the grand gala dinner,which took place in the Banqueting Hall, and consisted of 600 guests eating and drinking over 5.5 hours, which set a Guinness World Record for “the most lavish official banquet in modern history,” which I absolutely promise is a real record that I did not make up. 

Seriously, the food was provided by the Paris restaurant Maxim’s, which shut down for two weeks in order to cater the event, because after all, what better way to celebrate Iran than with Parisian food, and it was followed by a “Son et Lumiere” show, which you might assume was a show done by Lumiere’s son, but is actually a lights and music show, which was called Polytope of Persepolis. 

It was designed by a very fancy man named Iannis Xenakis, and was accompanied by a very fancy electronic music piece composed just for the occasion. The next day began with a parade showcasing the 2,500 year history of the Iranian military, with 1,724 soldiers dressed in gear from various periods, while the evening was occupied by a “traditional Persian party.” 

The final day saw the Shah inaugurate the Shahyad Tower in Tehran, in which was displayed the ancient Cyrus Cylinder, which also served as the party’s logo—because ancient cylinders covered in cuneiform script look great on commemorative t-shirts.

Finally, the festivities were capped off by a ceremony at the mausoleum of the Shah’s father, who was not-at-all coincidentally also known as the Shah. In the end, the Shah’s $22 million bash’s legacy was not its awesome gift bags, but the Iranian Revolution. 

In 1979, for reasons that many historians attribute in part to the anger caused by the party’s extravagance, the Shah was overthrown by a popular revolution that replaced his government with an Islamic Republic led by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and since then, things in the Middle East have, as we all know, been super duper calm and uneventful.

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