Niavaran Palace is the last palace Mohammad Reza Shah and Empress Farah lived in before the revolution — a modernist complex in the forested hills of northeastern Tehran that served as the primary royal residence from the late 1950s until January 1979. Unlike Sa'dabad, which is grand and formal, Niavaran is unexpectedly domestic in scale, with spaces that feel like they belonged to a family rather than a dynasty.
The main building, designed in the 1960s, contains the private apartments of the Shah and Empress preserved largely as they were left: the library with its French and Persian books, the dining room with its hand-painted tile mural, the children's rooms. The Sahebqaranieh Palace within the complex is an older Qajar-era structure used for state functions. The museum section holds Farah's personal art collection, which includes works by Picasso, Miró, and major Iranian painters. The garden setting and the Alborz backdrop make Niavaran one of the more pleasant places to spend a morning in Tehran.