Iran

Tehran — a megacity of 9 million sprawled at the foot of the Alborz mountains (Tochal peak, 3,964m, visible from central Tehran, skiable October–April with a gondola from the city) — with the National Museum of Iran (the finest collection of pre-Islamic Iranian art in the world — Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid objects spanning 3,000 years), the Golestan Palace (Qajar royal palace, UNESCO WHS) and the Grand Bazaar.

💡 The Tehran Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world — 10km of covered passageways connecting 5,500+ shops, caravanserais, mosques, schools and bathhouses in a labyrinthine city-within-a-city beneath vaulted brick ceilings. It has been in continuous commercial operation since the 13th century.

1h flight from Tehran. Esfahan — Abbas I’s 17th-century capital, with Naqsh-e Jahan Square (the second largest square in the world at 160,000m² — the Imam Mosque, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu Palace and the Qeysarieh Bazaar arranged around a 500m reflecting pool) and the SI Pol Bridge (a 17th-century bridge of 33 arches across the Zayandeh River, a social gathering place at sunset).

💡 The Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque (1619, built by Shah Abbas I) has no minarets and no courtyard — it was designed as a private royal mosque, accessible directly from the Ali Qapu Palace through an underground corridor. The interior dome (covered in cream tiles that glow golden-pink in the afternoon light) is considered the most beautiful single interior space in Islamic architecture.

The Vank Cathedral (1664, in the New Julfa Armenian quarter — a cathedral that combines Armenian cross-vault architecture with Persian blue-tile exterior and Baroque-influenced interior frescoes depicting Old Testament scenes — the most extraordinary hybrid sacred building in the Middle East) and the Khaju Bridge (17th century, 23 arches, combining the functions of dam, bridge, royal pleasure pavilion and public gathering space).

💡 Shah Abbas I forcibly relocated 150,000 Armenians from the Ararat plain (then Ottoman territory) to New Julfa in Esfahan between 1604 and 1606, to provide skilled craftsmen (particularly silk weavers and merchants) for his new capital. Their descendants have maintained the Armenian community in New Julfa for 400 years.

1h flight from Esfahan. Yazd — an ancient desert city (the oldest continuously inhabited city in Iran, perhaps the world) built entirely of mud-brick, with the forest of wind towers (badgirs) that cool the houses below, the Zoroastrian Fire Temple (a sacred flame burning continuously since 470 CE), the Tower of Silence (dakhmeh — where Zoroastrians once left their dead for the birds) and the finest traditional house district in Iran.

💡 Yazd’s badgir (wind tower) system is the world’s oldest form of natural air conditioning — tall chimney-like structures catch the prevailing wind at height, channel it downward through the building and exit it through an underground qanat (water channel) system that cools it by evaporation. The combination can reduce interior temperature by 15°C below the exterior on a 40°C day.

3h from Yazd by road. Persepolis (Takht-e Jamshid, 518–330 BCE — the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire, the largest empire the world had seen to that point, built by Darius I and expanded by Xerxes, destroyed by Alexander in 330 BCE) — the Apadana staircase reliefs (processions of tribute-bearers from all 23 subject nations, the finest carved stone narrative in antiquity outside Egypt).

💡 Persepolis was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE, allegedly in revenge for the Persian burning of Athens in 480 BCE. The ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus describes Alexander’s general Thais as suggesting the burning; Alexander regretted it the next morning. The palace complex burned for 7 days. The ruins were covered by windblown sand until excavated by Ernst Herzfeld in 1931.

1h from Persepolis. Shiraz — the city of Hafez and Sa’di (the two greatest Persian poets, both buried in Shiraz in gardens that remain places of pilgrimage for Iranians), the Nasir ol-Molk Mosque (the Pink Mosque, 1888 — the morning light through its stained-glass windows creates a carpet of coloured light across the tiled floor, the most photographed interior in Iran) and the Arg of Karim Khan (an 18th-century citadel built as a residential palace).

💡 Hafez (Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi, c.1315–1390) is the most beloved poet in Iranian history — his Divan (collected poems) is the most widely read book in Persian-speaking cultures after the Quran. Iranians use his poems for fal (divination) by opening the book at random and interpreting the first poem encountered as guidance for a question.

5h from Shiraz. Kashan — one of the finest traditional cities in Iran, with the Tabatabaei House (a 19th-century merchant mansion of extraordinary complexity — four courtyards, 40 rooms, wind towers and stained-glass windows in the finest Qajar domestic architecture), the Fin Garden (UNESCO, the oldest surviving Persian garden, 16th century) and the rose-water distilleries (Kashan produces 90% of Iran’s rose water, harvested in May). Fly from Tehran (IKA).

💡 The Persian garden (chahar bagh, “four gardens”) is the foundational concept in garden design worldwide — a walled garden divided by four channels representing the four rivers of paradise, with a pavilion at the centre. The design spread from Achaemenid Persia through the Mughals to India (the Taj Mahal is set in a chahar bagh), to the Islamic world and thence to the Spanish colonial Americas.