Susa was one of the great cities of the ancient Near East, its ruins near the modern town of Shush in Iran's Khuzestan province, in the lower Zagros foothills about 250 kilometers east of the Tigris. First settled around 4200 to 3800 BC, Susa became capital of the kingdom of Elam and flourished as a regional power from roughly 2700 to 540 BC before serving as the winter capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire from 540 to 330 BC, when Darius the Great built a great palace there. Excavations have uncovered this palace and its Apadana reception hall, among other monumental remains. Susa retained importance through the Hellenistic, Parthian, and Sasanian periods before declining after the Mongol invasion of 1218, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.
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