The former US Embassy on Taleghani Avenue — renamed "Den of Espionage" after the 1979 crisis — is the most historically charged building in Tehran. It has been preserved largely as the students found it when they stormed the compound: the communications equipment, the safes, the shredded documents painstakingly reassembled by Islamic Revolutionary Guard intelligence officers, and the ambassador's residence with its pool and gym that became evidence of American excess in revolutionary propaganda.
The anti-American murals on the perimeter walls remain Tehran's most photographed public art — a series of powerful political images depicting the Statue of Liberty as a skull, American imperialism trampling Iran, and various revolutionary slogans. The museum inside exhibits the reconstructed documents, military equipment, and intelligence material claimed to have been found on the premises. It is, obviously, a single-sided account of history — but it is a serious and careful one, and a sobering place to stand regardless of your political sympathies.