First place – A wall and gate near the Dayr-e Gachin Caravanserai in Iran. | Photo by Hossein Pourakbarian, CC BY-SA 4.0 The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the winners of the 16th edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition — with three of the top five entries hailing from Iran. Each year since 2010, photographers from around the globe have come together to celebrate cultural heritage through their camera lens. Since it’s Wikimedia, each photo is uploaded under a Creative Commons license, so it’s free to be used by other people. Second place – The Mehmāndust Tower in northern Iran was built by the Seljuk Empire in 1097 to serve as a tomb, but its dome and the names of the people interred there have long been lost to time. | Photo by Darabad Andromeda, CC BY-SA 4.0 For the most recent edition of the contest, 3,789 people submitted 227,918 photos to locally run national contests in September and October 2025.…