It has seen the Sassanid era, the Rashidun conquest, the armies of Peter the Great and later Russian rulers, and British colonialism.

Rasht has, along with regions around Tabriz and Tehran, one of the earliest industry plants during the last quarter of the 19th century, prominently in fields such as fishing, caviar production, the Caspian sea oil pipeline construction and textiles.

During the 20th century, until the mid-70s, Gilan and the Rasht region was the third-ranking industrial city in Iran by number of workers and per capita productivity.

The people of Rasht played a prominent role in instigation and radicalization of the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1907).

His own movement in Gilan, which went by the name of Jangalis, represented a pro-modern and social democratic program for reformation of Muslim rituals and traditions.

Mirza established the short-lived Persian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1920 after the defeat of the constitutional forces and in coalition with Iranian communists.

The Soviet Government, after a turn of military and political strategy proposed by Trotsky, withdrew its support and the republic itself was tormented by the inner conflicts between the newly established Iranian Communist Party (1919) and the Jangalis and other factions.

Nasim-e-Shomal, the first[citation needed] modern newspaper of Iran after the constitutional revolution, has been initially published in Rasht.

During the Qajar period, along with economic development between Iran and Russia, Noghan trade and other products expanded.

Grigoriy Melgunov [ru], a Russian orientalist and writer who visited Rasht at the end of 1860, wrote in his published notes that the city at that time had 5463 houses, 1021 shops, 22 mosques, 34 schools and 17 bathhouses, and a population of 27,314.

Enjoying the Kadus International Hotel and hundreds of tourist attractions, Rasht receives thousands of foreign tourists annually, mostly from Austria, Germany, Netherlands, France, Australia, Japan and African countries like Senegal and Cameroon as well as countries from Oceania like Micronesia.

Due to this background which makes the inhabitants much familiar with the industrial, cultural and political developments of the west, the finance and credit institutions are more willing to open representative offices and bureaus in Rasht and it has made the city a center of various banks and financial organizations.

The organizers and directors of national Iranian or non-Iranian banks afford to spend considerable amounts of budgets to construct attractive and modern buildings for their offices in Rasht.

Also the municipality kicks off sports, cultural or IT-related competitions to involve the youth in healthy and constructive activities.

Mirza Ghassemi, vavishka (a type of haggis), nargesi, baghala ghatogh, and ashpal (roe) are some other popular local dishes.

Zeitoun Parvardeh is a kind of delicacy prepared from olives and pomegranates; it is a popular seasoning in the city.

It was rediscovered near the Iranian provincial capital of Rascht by Miss Nancy Lindsay in 1945, and was brought back to the United Kingdom, where it was re-introduced around 1950.

During this period, Tomanians Russian Borrowing Bank and Trading House were active in Rasht consecutively.

[47] Hotel Hospital In 1947, 50 taxis were purchased from England by the order of Fakhr-ol-dowleh (daughter of Muzaffar al-Din Shah) and imported to Iran.

In 1948, the first taxi entered Rasht by crossing the main street of the city due to his interest in Gilan.

[48] The railway passes through Alborz mountains and then Sefidrood river valley and is connected to Karaj and Qazvin on its way to Tehran.