The Qasr (Castle) originally was built in 1790 as a palace by the Qajar dynasty. In the early 20th century a prison, designed to meet international standards by the Russian architect Nikolai Markov, was constructed and it’s this building that forms the first part of the museum. This imaginative sculpture park and museum occupies two former prisons, one for criminals and one for political prisoners. It had 192 rooms for 700 prisoners of which about 100 cells were solitary. It is now a museum complex surrounded by a public park.