Naqsh-e Rustam, Fars · Watercolour Postcard

Everyone comes for the giant royal tombs cut high into the cliff, the resting places of Darius the Great and other Achaemenid kings. But look lower down and there is a carving of the Persian king Shapur on horseback holding the wrist of a captured Roman emperor, Valerian, the only serving Roman emperor ever taken alive by a foreign enemy. One empire's proudest day, frozen in the rock of another. This A6 art postcard marks Naqsh-e Rustam, Fars.

Part of the Postcards Home series: a growing collection of original illustrated postcards, each rooted in a real place, ready to write and send.