It is believed that Ecbatana is located in the Zagros Mountains, the east of central Mesopotamia,[2] on Hagmatana Hill (Tappe-ye Hagmatāna).

[4] Along with Athens in Greece, Rome in Italy and Susa in Khuzestan, Ecbatana is one of the few ancient cities in the world that is still alive and important, representing the current-day Hamadan.

[6] After choosing Ecbatana as his capital, Deioces decided to build a huge and strong palace in the form of seven nested castles.

[13][14] The Assyrians do not seem to mention Ecbatana, and it is likely they never penetrated east of the Alvand despite two centuries of involvement in Median areas of the central Zagros.

[16] Although Ecbatana lost its former importance, it was located on the royal road, where it connected Persepolis to Sardis, and situated at the foot of Mount Alvand.

[19] Some weeks before Darius III was killed in a coup in July 330 BC, Ecbatana was conquered, and Persepolis destroyed by Alexander.

[21][22][23] Ecbatana later became the summer capital of the Parthians,[24] and their main mint, producing drachms, tetradrachms, and assorted bronze denominations.

[25] The wealth and importance of the city during classical antiquity are attributed to its location, a crucial crossroads that made it a staging post on the main east–west highway called High-Road.

[27] Graphite, gold, platinum, antimony, iron, and various minerals are found there; however, the classics mention oil seeps and flares, and there is no evidence of exploitation of these resources.

[28][29][4] In 130 BC, with the intention of restoring the Seleucid power to Iran, Antiochus VII stopped in Ecbatana for a short period of time,[30] just as Tigranes the Great, who stayed there in the following year to attack Mithridates II.

The Greeks thought Ecbatana to be the capital of the Median empire and credited its foundation to Deioces (the Daiukku of the cuneiform inscriptions).

"Herodotus's description is corroborated in part by stone reliefs from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, depicting Median citadels ringed by concentric walls.

The Nabonidus Chronicle, an ancient Babylonian text from the 5th century BC, describes how Astyages, the last Median king, was dethroned and how Cyrus conquered Ecbatana.

[4] The summit of the Moṣallā, an 80 m (260 ft)-high rock hill in the southeast sector, contains stone and brick remnants of a rectangular citadel marked by towers.

There is a "small, open-sided room with four corner columns supporting a domed ceiling, similar to a Median-era structure from Tepe Nush-i Jan, interpreted as a Zoroastrian fire temple.

[42] Fossey discovered fragments of column bases adorned with arabesques and inscriptions, glazed bricks, and faience tiles during the course of the six-week excavation of Mosalla.

Based on his chance discoveries, it looks like the 30 m (98 ft)-high mound, Tell Hagmatana, is the site of the Median citadel and the Achaemenid royal construction.

Earlier, a lack of significant archaeological remains from the Median and Achaemenid periods had prompted suggestions of other sites for Ecbatana.

[47][48] It is now proposed that the absence of any mention of Ecbatana in Assyrian sources can be explained by the possibility that Assyria never became involved as far east as the Alvand mountains, but only in the western Zagros.

[3] Sir Henry Rawlinson attempted to prove that there was a second and older Ecbatana in Media Atropatene on the site of the modern Takht-i-Suleiman.

[51][37] Ecbatana is the supposed capital of Astyages (Istuvegü), which was taken by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in the sixth year of the reign of Nabonidus (550/549 BC).

[citation needed] In 1967, the excavations of this place began under the supervision of David Stronach, which led to the identification of three historical periods in three separate floors.