The designation was finalized during a Sunday meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, according to a statement on the UN body’s website.

“The railway is notable for its scale and the engineering works it required to overcome steep routes and other difficulties,” read part of the statement on the listing.

The committee inscribed three other sites from China, India and Spain on its World Heritage List on Sunday.

The Trans-Iranian Railway is locally known as the Rah-Ahan Shomal-Jonub which literally translates as North-South Railway. It was completed in 1938 after 11 years of construction which involved massive works on mountains and terrains up and down the country.

Iran to finish digitalizing records for public, state lands by September
Iran to finish digitalizing records for public, state lands by September
Iran will have digitalized records for 133 million hectares of public and state lands by late September.
The masterpiece of engineering spans 1,394 kilometers from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf and goes through several climate regions that are home to people from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

The railway is now the 25th Iranian title on the World Heritage List. That makes the country one of the richest in the world in terms of the protection of cultural heritage.

CEO of Islamic Republic of Iran Railways Saeid Rasouli hailed the listing as a great achievement for Iran’s transportation sector.

Rasouli told the semi-official Fars news agency on Sunday that Iran had become only the fifth country in the world with a railway designated as a world heritage site.

“This creates a valuable opportunity for the country’s tourism sector and we hope we could benefit the most from this opportunity,” said the official, adding that UNESCO experts had been convinced during a October 2019 visit to Iran that the Trans-Iranian Railway should be promoted to the status of a global heritage site.