Central Museum Mashhad

This eclectic museum kicks off with chunks of now-superseded shrine decor interspersed with contemporary sporting medals presented by pious athletes, while the basement stamp collection includes a 1983 commemorative featuring the ‘Takeover of the US Spy Den’. The 1st-floor Visual Arts Gallery offers you the opportunity to shower money (or hats) down onto the top of the Holy Shrine’s fourth zarih tomb encasement (replaced in 2001). Amid seashells and naturalist landscape paintings of Surrey, keep an eye out for Mahmood Farshchian’s modern classic Afternoon of Ashura – a grief-stricken depiction of Imam Hossein’s horse returning empty to camp after the Imam’s martyrdom.