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
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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Southeastern Iran
The 'contemporary' section of this wide-ranging gallery is a selection of thought-provoking photographic and illustrative social commentary in the rear…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Southeastern Iran
Birjan's adobe-plastered fortress has been comprehensively restored and looks particularly impressive at night when glowing with the lights of the…
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Southeastern Iran
Old Esfandiar feels like an Indiana Jones discovery, a virtually deserted tight-packed village of crumbling old buildings – several three storeys high –…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
