Deep in the stark beauty of the deserts of southeastern Persia on the ancient route leading towards India lies one of the most unexpected – and spectacular – sights in all the Middle East. This is the vast, deserted fortress city of Bam. Although founded in the Sasanian period and described as a great impregnable citadel in the 10^th century, most of what can be seen today is 17^th century and later. The immense mud ramparts are still virtually intact, and inside is an entire, silent crumbling city. One can wander along deserted streets, narrow passages, under archways, out into courtyards surrounded by crumbling rooms, into private houses and past bazaars that are now utterly quite, until one at last approaches the famous citadel, up through a series of great courts and barracks. On top one can at last truly appreciate the eerie city spread out below, with more crumbling walls and great dome stretching beyond the ramparts out into the desert.

 The entire city is, of course, a goldmine for the student of vernacular architecture, and one can appreciate traditional building techniques such as various mud vaulting and dome systems, or traditional forms of buildings such as ice-houses, cisterns, or various styles of courtyard houses, each with a central courtyard portal facing the prevailing wind so as to catch any breeze. Rarely can one find a better testament to the qualities of mud and adobe architecture. Although Bam witnessed many great upheavals throughout its history, the reason for its desertion are nothing more dramatic than the exhaustion of its water tables, causing its last inhabitants to move to the new city of Bam a short distance away at the beginning of this century.  

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Sir Roger Stevens describes Mahan as “the most ravishing single group of buildings in Iran”. It is a shrine complex commemorating a famous Persian mystic and poet, Nureddin Nematullah, who died in 1431. The first buildings were probably erected here shortly after his death, but most of it dates from considerable enlargement ad embellishment carried out during the reign of Shah Abbas in the 17^th century, when the exquisite blue tiled dome with its unusual geometric design was built. The popularity of the shrine as a place of pilgrimage, particularly by the Sufi order, which Nematullah founded, ensured that such embellishment continued well into the 19^th century, when the rather gaudily tiled minarets were added. The shrine proper is approached through an exquisite walled garden, with running water and magnificent cypress, pine and plane tress. The interior appears startlingly spacious after the modest proportions of the exterior, but with the central chamber of the burial itself flanked by two immense vaulted halls with the clean lines of the ribs picked out in stucco. The combination of great simplicity and extreme elaboration in the architecture, however, never jars, and buildings and gardens- not to mention the lovely setting in its green valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains-make Mahan easily one of the loveliest spots in all Iran.  

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There is an even lovelier garden also to be found in Mahan – or rather just outside it to the south at the foot of Mount Jupar. This is the Shahzadeh (i.e. Prince’s), Gardens, a traditional walled garden built in the 1880s that remained in private hands until the Revolution. It has a watercourse – an essential element of all traditional Persian gardens- lined with magnificent oriental plane trees – the chinar – with pavilions at each end from where one obtains breathtaking vistas of the gardens with the mountains beyond. Gardens such as this the classic Persian poets wrote about, and this one is perhaps the loveliest that can be found in Iran.