Persepolis gets its name from the capital city of the Achaemenid Empire, which was a vast and powerful kingdom in pre-Islamic Iran. The remains of the city itself feature briefly in Satrapi’s memoir when she describes the shah visiting the grave of Cyrus the Great. The image depicts a buried Cyrus scowling upward at the shah, evoking the contempt many Iranians felt for a ruler imposed on the country by Western powers. In this, it reflects the broader symbolism of Persepolis itself, which represents Iran’s rich history and culture, which are threatened not only by the fundamentalist regime but also by the reduction of Iran to that regime in the Western imagination.

As the memoir progresses, Persepolis also takes on more personal significance. Persepolis ends with Satrapi leaving Tehran, and while she will eventually return in Persepolis 2, she can never return to the Iran of her childhood: That has changed permanently as a result of regime change, war, and her own loss of innocence. Persepolis the city thus comes to symbolize Satrapi’s own lost past as well as Iran’s, in keeping with the theme of Coming of Age During Revolution, Civil Unrest, and War.