Choose a continent, then guess its highlighted countries.
Choose your adventure
About Karshvar
I built Karshvar to make discovering the world easier for people who
love reading history. My biggest difficulty was always geography:
from Anatolia to the Caucasus, from the Iranian plateau to
Byzantium, I kept losing track of where important events happened.
So I started studying geography, and this game grew out of that
learning. It is both a way to test myself and a step toward the
offline companion I wanted for exploring the world. I plan to add
more historical features over time.
Karshvar takes its name from an ancient Iranian word related to
today’s Persian word for country. In Avestan cosmology, the world
was described as seven regions.
The ceremonial terraces of the Achaemenid kings make a striking
introduction to ancient Iran. Slow down at the stairways: the carved
delegations and their clothing tell a more intimate story than the
scale of the palace alone.
Cyrus the Great’s capital feels very different from Persepolis. Its
scattered remains sit in an open plain. Look at the compact tomb of
Cyrus, then consider how the palace and garden remains once formed a
royal landscape.
This Elamite sacred city predates the Persian Empire. Its great
brick ziggurat is the focal point, but the enclosing walls help you
imagine the wider religious complex. Notice how layers of brick give
the monument its rhythm.
Susa is a place to think in layers. Successive communities built
here for thousands of years, leaving traces of homes, administration
and palaces. The archaeological mounds reward an interest in how
cities change, rather than a search for one complete building.
Away from the royal capitals, this Bronze Age settlement reveals
another side of early urban life. Its residential areas, workshops
and burial grounds point to a society connected by craft and trade.
Think of a working city, not simply a collection of ruins.
