Though archaeologists have discovered evidence of prehistoric settlement, inscriptions indicate that construction of the city began under Darius I, who, as a member of a new branch of the royal house, made Persepolis the capital of Persia proper, replacing Pasargadae, the burial place of Cyrus II (the Great). Built in a remote and mountainous region, Persepolis was an inconvenient royal residence, visited mainly in the spring. The effective administration of the Achaemenian realms was carried on from the imperial cities of Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana. This accounts for the Greeks being unacquainted with Persepolis until Alexander the Great’s invasion of Asia. In 330 bce, during the reign of Darius III, Alexander plundered the city and burned the palace of Xerxes, whose brutal campaign to invade Greece more than a century before had led, eventually, to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire. In 316 bce Persepolis was still the capital of Persis as a province of the Macedonian empire. The city gradually declined under the Seleucid kingdom and after, its ruins attesting its ancient glory.
About 200 ce the nearby city of Istakhr (Estakhr, Stakhr) was the seat of local government, and Istakhr acquired importance as a centre of priestly wisdom and orthodoxy. Thereafter the city became the centre of the Persian Sāsānian dynasty, though the stone ruins that still stand just west of Persepolis suggest that Istakhr dates from Achaemenian times. The Sāsānian kings (3rd–7th century ce) covered the face of the rocks in that neighbourhood—and in part even the Achaemenian ruins—with their sculptures and inscriptions in Pahlavi and must themselves have built largely at Persepolis, though never on the same scale of magnificence as that of their ancient predecessors. The Romans knew as little about Istakhr as the Greeks had about Persepolis, in spite of the fact that for 400 years the Sāsānians maintained relations, friendly or hostile, with the Roman Empire.
At the time of the Arab conquest, Istakhr offered a desperate resistance. The city was still a place of considerable importance in the first century of Islam, although its greatness was soon to be eclipsed by the new metropolis of Shīrāz. By the 10th century ce it had become an insignificant place, as may be seen from a description of it written by the Arab geographer al-Maqdisī (c. 985). In the mid-11th century the Seljuq emir Qutulmish razed it and transferred its population to Shīrāz.