Southeastern Iran
Kerman’s magnificent 'Sartasari' ('end-to-end') Bazaar is one of the oldest and most memorable trading centres in Iran. Its main thoroughfare stretches…
Must-see attractions in Southeastern Iran
Southeastern Iran
With lush date-palm groves, domed mud-brick houses, carpet-saddled camels and a distant backdrop of arid mountain ridges, it's hard to imagine a more…
Southeastern Iran
One of Iran's most impressive fortress-citadels, the Arg's vast adobe walls top a gentle slope directly south of central Rayen. Inside is a castle within…
Southeastern Iran
A Unesco site, this troglodyte village is a series of over 400 cave-houses with a total of more than 2500 kiche rooms burrowed into the gently sloping…
Southeastern Iran
Walking to and exploring this mountaintop fortress ruin is the highlight of a visit to Qa'en, especially if you time your descent to coincide with sunset,…
Aramgah-e Shah Ne’matollah Vali
Southeastern Iran
The physical and spiritual heart of Mahan is filled by the impressive mausoleum complex of dervish-mystic and poet Shah Ne’matollah Vali, who died in 1431…
Southeastern Iran
The Kaluts is a large area in which the rough, rocky desert has been sculpted by millennia of wind erosion into long lines of photogenic formations. Much…
Southeastern Iran
The 'contemporary' section of this wide-ranging gallery is a selection of thought-provoking photographic and illustrative social commentary in the rear…
Southeastern Iran
Where Shohada St approaches the arid crags that abruptly mark the city's eastern edge sits this hefty octagonal structure of mysterious provenance. Some…
Southeastern Iran
This historic bathhouse is now a museum in which wax dummies illustrate the workings of a traditional hammam. Signage is a little garbled ('AD' dates…
Southeastern Iran
Arriving at these handsome gardens is like being beamed onto a different planet. One second you’re in the arid semidesert, the next it’s all flowing…
Southeastern Iran
With prominent blue-and-white-tiled roofs dating from the late Qajar period, this attractive mausoleum is the last resting place of several Kerman…
Southeastern Iran
Possibly Iran's most mind-blowing work of contemporary art was haphazardly created over decades by deaf/non-verbal shepherd Darvish Khan Esfandiarpur, who…
Southeastern Iran
Wrapping a conical crag in ruined fortress ramparts, Qaleh Dokhtar is a dramatic, if well camouflaged, castle. From its summit you can appreciate its…
Southeastern Iran
Around Qa'en you can find several old villages of low, domed, mud hovels, which have been almost entirely abandoned as folks moved to new, more sanitary…
Southeastern Iran
The expansive Imam Mosque courtyard covers 6000sqm with tiled iwans (barrel-vaulted halls) on three sides. But it's the main southwest iwan that's the…
Southeastern Iran
Although possibly 9th-century in origin, the main core of Qa'en's bulky central mosque predominantly dates from a 1394 rebuild funded by a Timurid…
Southeastern Iran
As you walk east into the Bazar-e Sartasari from Tohid Sq, turn left at the first 12-sided charsoq (junction) to find shops selling shiny copper-plated…
Southeastern Iran
Birjan's adobe-plastered fortress has been comprehensively restored and looks particularly impressive at night when glowing with the lights of the…
Southeastern Iran
Old Esfandiar feels like an Indiana Jones discovery, a virtually deserted tight-packed village of crumbling old buildings – several three storeys high –…
Southeastern Iran
Opposite the single-iwan old mosque in Eresk you can see a few mud-built buildings, but there's a whole lot more hidden in an Old Town section that lies…
Southeastern Iran
Crouched on the lower slopes of Qa'en's abrupt southern mountains, this restrained but beautifully restored tomb is supposedly the last resting place of…
Southeastern Iran
With an entrance hidden away in the northeastern corner of Ganj Ali Khan Sq, this tiny but lavishly decorated mosque was once the private place of worship…
Southeastern Iran
The Museum of the Holy Defence remembers the eight-year Iran–Iraq War through maps, gruesome photos, weapons, letters and intelligence documents from the…
Southeastern Iran
For most motorists, Deyhuk is simply the annoying point at which the Kerman–Mashhad highway narrows into a standard two-lane road – and turns a right…
Southeastern Iran
This Safavid-era ice house has preserved not just the stepped, conical adobe dome but also the tall mud walls that created winter shade over what would…
Southeastern Iran
With its triple windtower and central fountain pool, the Mostafi House is Boshrooyeh's best-preserved historic building and an icon of sorts for the town…
Southeastern Iran
The hushed Kerman National Library has modestly billed itself as Iran's ‘greatest informatic research centre’, but for non-Farsi speakers it’s the…
Southeastern Iran
Home to just 17 families, the little farming hamlet of Haogand uses its mud fortress and several antique, mud-built domed houses as barns and animal pens.
Southeastern Iran
The long qanat (underground canal) that takes water to Boshrooyeh is also used to power a series of antique, subterranean watermills. Asiyab Miyun is one…
Southeastern Iran
Less than a kilometre north of Shafiabad, Dehseif's mud-walled 'caravanserai' is actually a mud-walled citadel, with shattered remnants of many former…
Southeastern Iran
Close to the turning for Shafiabad and Dehseif, a passageway leads down to an unusually accessible stretch of qanat, an underground water channel.
Southeastern Iran
A now-dry underground water cistern has been converted into a one-room museum of water technology demonstrating how desert cities like Qa'en traditionally…
Southeastern Iran
Driving east to west across the Lut Desert you'll see plenty of mirages, but when you reach Rud Shur, amazingly, the water is no mirage. Though usually…
Southeastern Iran
Old Afin is an extensive spread of ruined mud buildings on a series of knolls around a shattered former Jameh Mosque. With a backdrop of low triangular…
Southeastern Iran
Some 500m beyond the western end of the new village, Marghoob's deserted old section is a fine example of an abandoned mountain village, with its approach…
Southeastern Iran
The buildings are mostly new and the 'eternal fire' in a giant central chalice smoulders rather than flares, but if you've never visited a working…
Southeastern Iran
Hidden behind high walls is the 1911 former governor's mansion, later bought by a progressive businessman who brought electricity to Kerman. (Reza Shah…
Southeastern Iran
The strange, circular-fronted building topped with calligraphy on what looks like a lighthouse tower is in fact a venue for zorkhaneh, a traditional…
Southeastern Iran
This Qajar-era garden has an avenue of tall pines leading down from a minor, two-storey pink-brick palace. It's worth a quick peep but is surely one of…
