Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s slain supreme leader, had seemed immovable for decades, a man whose authority had become so deeply woven into Iran’s political and religious life that imagining the country without him felt almost impossible.

Now Tehran — the capital from which he ruled, where he was killed and which had shaped his life — is the center of his final journey, filled with mourners for funeral ceremonies taking place across several days, which are part farewell, part spectacle and part turning point.

In the days leading up to the first public mourning, the city changed. First gradually, and then all at once, in the way cities often change before moments of consequence.

Families from provincial towns rolled into Tehran, joining masses who revered Ayatollah Khamenei as patriarch and guardian of the Islamic republic, an order that so many others had long opposed while suffering under its deep repression. Foreign officials, many from authoritarian nations, militia members and religious leaders flew from all over the world, reflecting both Iran’s global reach and its distance from the West.

We traveled there as well, the first visit by New York Times journalists to the country since before the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February and the government cracked down brutally on protests that started in December. We found a country trying to project strength and stability but pervaded by uncertainty.

We arrived in Tehran, a dense city of around nine million that spreads outward in a sprawl of apartment blocks, glass towers and tree-lined boulevards, with neighborhoods that shift in character from one district to the next. Beside the pomp and circumstance, war-damaged buildings stood scarred along major roads and daily life was still shaped by water shortages and electricity blackouts. Families who lost loved ones in the crackdown were still living with grief — and hoping for justice.

As more people arrived, Ayatollah Khamenei’s presence seemed to expand with them. Across major highways and narrow alleys, in small cafes and sprawling bookstores, portraits of him began to cover the city.

Some show him young, with a dark beard and a stern expression. Others portray the older man many Iranians had grown used to seeing over decades, his beard turned white with age. In some, Ayatollah Khamenei appears beside Mojtaba, his son and successor, the pairing feeling less like a portrait than the passing of one chapter into the next.

The funeral preparations unfolded with the choreography of a major state event. Security checkpoints, organized transportation, public announcements, carefully arranged ceremonial spaces.

We were granted restricted access to the funeral ceremonies by the Iranian government, which closely controlled our movements, and which required a translator and guide to accompany us. It was a quiet reminder of how closely the story itself was being choreographed, and who was permitted to tell it.

The streets, too, were managed and staged.

Along Valiasr Street, where traffic usually performs its daily ritual of impatience and frustration, movement slowed as the roads gradually surrendered to the funeral preparations. Workers built stations to feed and give water to those arriving to mourn him.

Loudspeakers sent chants and laments through the air, and praised the supreme leader who was killed at the onset of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

A little farther away, at Enghelab Square, another version of Tehran moved beneath a giant mourning billboard.

Young women with uncovered hair and cigarettes in hand, and men with pierced ears, crossed paths with conservative women in black chadors carrying Iranian flags and praying quietly. It was an image that seemed to contain the contradictions of Iran itself: a nation Ayatollah Khamenei had shaped for decades, and one that, in his final years, had increasingly pushed back against the boundaries of his oppressive rule.

We lingered for almost two hours at the square, where most people were unwilling to talk to us, wary of foreign media. We asked to interview a woman with blond hair, a dark blue denim skirt, full makeup and a hijab barely resting at the edge of her hair. She smiled softly and said, “I am afraid I won’t be able to say what’s in my heart.”

At the square, some people stopped to photograph the giant statue of a clenched fist. Others kept walking and driving by. Every evening, life continued beneath the preparations, ordinary rhythms folding themselves into something much larger. Street vendors calling out, motorcycles weaving between cars, tea glasses clinking in small cafes.

Beneath the banners and portraits was another Tehran, a city worn by months of pressure.

A regional war with Israel last year compounded a financial malaise exacerbated by sanctions. Those economic frustrations boiled over into mass protests beginning in late December that the authorities crushed, killing thousands. Then came the war with the United States and Israel, taking the lives of young children at school, damaging historic sites like Golestan Palace and leaving residents checking the skies and refreshing news alerts. The past months had seemed to compress multiple eras of strain into a single season.

And states — especially autocratic ones like Iran’s — often answer uncertainty with scale.

So this exhausted capital has suddenly found itself transformed into the stage for a burial spectacle of extraordinary proportions.

At the Grand Mosalla, a sprawling mosque complex in Tehran, tens of thousands arrived this weekend dressed almost entirely in black to pray for and pay their respects to the Shiite Muslim patriarch. They cried and wailed openly. They struck their chests and heads in ritual mourning. Some sat on the ground, weary and stunned.

“Khamenei was the foundation of our lives,” said Mohamed Soleimani, from Tehran, who sat at the mosque’s grounds, head bowed, holding a photo of Mojtaba Khamenei.

Grief also gave way to anger. Fists rose in the air. Chants of revenge filled the space — directed at Israel, at the United States and, repeatedly, at one man whose name was taken up again and again by the crowd: Donald J. Trump.

The funeral, which will continue in the coming days through Tehran, other Iranian cities and even neighboring Iraq, seems designed to do something larger than simply bury a leader.

It is an effort to project continuity at a moment when the country itself seems caught in a period of transition and uncertainty.

So Iran moves forward for now, beneath commemorative banners and enormous portraits of Ayatollah Khamenei, still trying to understand what exactly is ending — and what is taking shape in its place.

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, booked a public park in Brussels for an invitation-only party to celebrate 250 years of American independence last weekend. There were lobster rolls, country music and fireworks.

Evidently, there was also damage.

The fireworks display left black marks on a building in the Cinquantenaire Park, Mr. White confirmed by phone on Friday. He said the fireworks company hired for the event would handle the repairs and said that a storm the night before the event may have washed protective coating from the structure.

“There are some black soot marks on the top of the monument where the fireworks went off,” Mr. White said, explaining that he had been in touch with the mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, about the issue. The building in question houses the Royal Museums of Art and History, according to the local building authority.

Mr. Close did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Possible damage to the museum in the Cinquantenaire Park was reported earlier this week by two Belgian news outlets, De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad. Shortly after the news broke, Mr. White posted on social media that he was “in immediate contact with the Belgian company that was hired to coordinate all event logistics.”

“Cinquantenaire has never looked any cleaner than it was the day after we cleaned up after our event,” he added.

The office of Vanessa Matz, who oversees the Belgian Buildings Agency, said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the agency was conducting an analysis of the damage to the roofs and cornices, adding that it could also have been linked to the storms.

Many of the Cinquantenaire Park’s structures were constructed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The event celebrating 250 years of U.S. independence was framed against the park’s triumphal arch, which is topped with the statue of a bronze chariot and is a symbol of Brussels.

The celebration was attended by thousands of people. It included performances by the country music singer Alexis Wilkins, who is dating Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director; and Zac Brown Band, a country group. Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, and Bart De Wever, Belgium’s prime minister, were among the high-ranking European officials who attended.

The event also drew criticism. Protesters shouted loudly outside of the park as the evening kicked off. Media in Brussels alternately described the party as the “hottest ticket” and “divisive.”

Like similar parties across the continent, the Brussels bash came against the backdrop of a diplomatic tug of war. Over the past 18 months, Mr. Trump has increased tariffs on Europe, threatened to take over Greenland and repeatedly questioned the U.S. commitment to NATO, disturbing the close relationship that has defined the global order since the end of the Second World War.

As the trans-Atlantic relationship deteriorates, Brussels, which is home to NATO and to the institutions of the European Union, has felt the consequences. Some officials at the event nodded to that tension.

“Like in any marriage, we have disagreements,” Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, said at the party.

Mr. White, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, is the former chief executive of the Intrepid Museum in New York and has cut a colorful figure in Belgium. He threw an ornate party earlier this year to screen “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady, and has drawn rebuke for being unusually outspoken on domestic issues in his host country.

At the U.S. independence event last Sunday, Mr. White used his remarks to unveil a ring encrusted with diamonds from Antwerp as a gift from the city’s diamond sector to President Trump.

He also called out the American pop singer Katy Perry, whom he had talked about as a possible performer, for having missed the bash.

“So we were going to have Katy Perry. Who cares?” he said at the event.

Mr. White said on Friday that he would be cheering for the U.S. team when they play Belgium in a World Cup soccer match on Monday.

Every year for the past century, in the green hills of rural Denmark, thousands of Americans and Danes come together to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The gathering is billed as the largest Fourth of July celebration outside the United States, and partygoers decked out in the Stars and Stripes sing American songs, eat hot dogs and, because this is Denmark after all, down Danish beer and aquavit.

This year it’s going to be a little different.

Organizers are expecting the smallest crowd ever. Some locals say they are sitting it out. And the American government has been uninvited, something that has never happened before and in the past would have been unthinkable.

Nixon. Reagan. Walter Cronkite. Walt Disney. Even Dionne Warwick. Some real heavyweights have flocked in on the Fourth to this blip of a town, Rebild, surrounded by purple heather fields and pig farms. Just about every year, the American ambassador to Denmark makes an appearance.

But this year, President Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, have soured the mood. His obsession with Greenland has hijacked what used to be a very tight Danish-American relationship. Many Danes now question why they should celebrate the most patriotic day in the United States, on Danish soil, with public funds no less.

And so local politicians, no doubt smelling a juicy issue, stepped in.

Lasse Olsen, a municipal council member who has agitated against the event for years, called Mr. Trump “an imperialistic mad man.”

He said that, given the way Mr. Trump had behaved toward Denmark, the presence of any officials from his administration would “disturb and distort” the festival. He led the charge this spring that gave the event’s organizers an ultimatum: Cut American officials from the program or lose logistical support and public funds (typically around $50,000).

The festival organizers agreed to remove U.S. officials from the program and said that embassy officials were sad about it but accepted it. The organizers also said that any Americans coming to the event this weekend in a private capacity were welcome.

The change stings. Organizers plan all year for a gala, a business round table and live music, culminating in an outdoor bash usually with some famous speakers. But this year, all anyone is talking about is Mr. Trump.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Bruce Bro, a retired American businessman with Danish ancestry who is a board member of the Rebild National Park Society, the organization that plans the party. He said that he supported the decision to keep American officials from participating.

“You don’t want people throwing a drink on the ambassador,” he said.

The U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen declined to comment.

The annual pilgrimage to Rebild started in 1912. It was the vision of Max Henius, a Danish American biochemist who helped refine beer brewing. He organized the purchase of land in the hills as a place to celebrate the bonds between Denmark and the United States.

In the early days, Danes who emigrated to America (many to the Midwest, where the landscape reminded them of home) flocked back to Rebild on the Fourth to reconnect with kin. After World War II, when the United States was seen as a hero and ties to the old country were still strong, Mr. Bro said that 50,000 people would show up.

But those ties have faded. And the party in Rebild has taken a hit. Recent crowds rarely surpass the low thousands. This year, organizers say they’ll be lucky to get a thousand.

The program still includes singing the Danish and American anthems, admiring classic American cars, eating hot dogs and open-faced shrimp sandwiches and spotting people dressed as American historical figures.

Last year, Denmark’s foreign minister was the keynote speaker; this time, another minister, lesser known, is planning to come, the Foreign Ministry said.

Lasse Frimand Jensen, mayor of Aalborg, which is one of the municipalities involved in the party, said that his council had decided to take a stand against American officials only after consulting with colleagues in the central government.

The mayor wouldn’t say who, but he’s well connected in the same political party as Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, who has irritated Mr. Trump by her steadfastness over Greenland. She’s from this same area of Denmark, too.

Over the past few days, organizers have gone through their pre-party rituals: smoothing out American state flags to decorate the party ground, setting up tables and chairs and readying a fleet of golf carts to ferry older people down the gravelly path to the spot in the rugged green valley where the festivities take place.

Organizers say their biggest struggle is to attract younger people.

Mr. Bro said that he heard a lot of people, young and old, saying they didn’t want to come this year because of all the Greenland tensions. As for his own views, he said that he was “horrified” when Mr. Trump threatened to snatch the island from Denmark and that his relatives felt the same way.

“It’s very sad,” he said. “We want to keep this tradition alive. And we blame Trump.”