Holy Defense Museum in Tehran embodies Iran's memories in bloody Iran-Iraq War

TEHRAN, IRAN - SEPTEMBER 21: Iran-Iraq war, which is mostly known as the ‘Holy defense’ or the ‘Imposed war’ in Iran, forms a significant part of Iranian contemporary history, which has deeply influenced the lives, and visions of most people in the country. An epic-scale museum, Iran's Holy Defense Museum is dedicated to the Iran–Iraq War, a bloody eight-year conflict that claimed a million lives. Iran aims to keep the traces of the Iran-Iraq war alive in citizens’ minds and hand down it on to the next generations. The museum exhibits the equipment, weapons used in the war and the items of soldiers who lost their lives during the war. The building consists of seven halls that commemorate the war's martyrs and makes the visitors run through the history of the conflict in forensic detail. The panorama museum along with other parts of the complex consisting tomb of ‘the Unknown Soldiers’, flag tower, a designed open area with an artificial lake, Khoramshahr Mosque and a library, has been built in Abas-Abad district in a landscape about 21 hectares to be one of the largest museums of Iran. Each hall of the museum (7 in total) has been dedicated to a specific aspect of the Iran-Iraq’s war through video clips and other medias to portray the long-lasting impacts of the war and some cruel and bitter realities of it. In the entrance, the hall of ‘Butterflies’ welcomes visitors by displaying the personal belonging of the victims of the war found on different battlefields. (Footage by Eisa Mohammadi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)