The shah of Iran's last refuge before fleeing his country in 1979 was a palatial estate nestled against the Alborz Mountains a place no Iranian ever dreamed of visiting.
Today, it costs them around USD 1.
The Niavaran Palace, a complex of mansions on a 27-acre (11-hectare) plot, now welcomes the public to marvel at the luxuries the shah enjoyed as Iran's monarch for nearly four decades.
As Iran reflects on Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's departure from the country 40 years ago on Wednesday, the palace has taken on even more meaning for those visiting and working there.
"We did what we did consciously. We were following an ideology," said Jamal Shahosseini, who as a young revolutionary raided the palace with other demonstrators.
"When you do something consciously and with an ideology, you go until the end despite pressures," he said.
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The compound dates back to Iran's Qajar dynasty in the 1800s, when the monarchy chose to build a summer palace on a mountainside.
As Tehran grew during its oil boom years of the 1960s, the shah's Marmar Palace near the city's vast Grand Bazaar became increasingly untenable for the monarch to live in as political tensions against his rule grew.
That included a failed 1965 assassination attempt by a member of his guard who was close to religious dissidents.
Instead, the royal family found refuge at the Niavaran Palace.
The shah's third wife, Queen Farah, had been an architecture student.
She spent millions of dollars renovating the compound's palaces.
A wing of one palace became a private art gallery of pieces she purchased known as the Window to the World.
The shah would walk the grounds or speed along its roads in one of his many sports cars.
A pilot, he'd fly helicopters in and out as well, staying off the streets as tensions rose.
All that spending, and long circulating rumours of embezzlement surrounding the Pahlavi dynasty, helped fuel anger against the monarchy.
From abroad, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom the shah had forced into exile early on, called for a revolution.
As 1979 came, the pressure became unbearable for the shah, who at the time was secretly battling the cancer that would ultimately kill him in exile.
On January 16, 1979, the shah left the palace for the last time by helicopter, looking out over a Tehran he never would see again.
On February 11, 1979, the day the revolution took hold, protesters pushed past the remaining Imperial Guards at the compound.
Among them was Shahosseini, now a 63-year-old guard at the museum.
He remembers scrawling graffiti over the walls, ranging from "Viva Khomeini" to "Death to the Shah."
"They thought we were Communists trying to capture the palace. We told them that we were not Communists but were Khomeini's supporters from the Niavaran neighbourhood. Then we conquered the palace."
For Fardin Asgari, a 28-year-old visitor born long after the revolution and Iran's bloody eight-year war with Iraq, the takeaway from the French-style furniture and luxury surroundings was that "the people viewed the shah as a dictator."