We drive from Yazd in the morning for Shiraz, reaching Pasargad in time for lunch. A few minutes drive from the restaurant, we walk into a landscape once lush and filled with gardens and palaces, now open and literally windswept on the day we’re there, showcasing the skeletal remains of Cyrus’ 6th-century glory. In the [...]

This hotel is many people’s favorite; a converted caravanserai with brick mosaic ceilings built around a garden. Popular with Yazdis as well, it seems. Last night when we arrived by bus from Kerman, it was hosting a wedding party with men at long tables in the garden and well-dressed women with the bride in a [...]

On Thursday we lingered in the 14th and 15th centuries, first at the Rayen citadel, then at the Sufi shrine of Shah Nematullah Vali (think Persian Nostradamus and founder of a dervish order) in Mahan. The citadel, now the largest after the earthquake destruction of Bam, awaited us under a perfect blue sky today, its [...]

We can be forgiven, I think, if we struggle to comprehend the physical record of the Persian empire, even the sample of a single day in Tehran. In the stunning archeological displays at the National Museum we began with painted pottery of 6th millennium B.C. and moved through time to the 6th century reigns of [...]

First off if you’re up early, a walk in Park Laleh, a leafy refuge that fills the block behind our hotel. But don’t expect tranquility before breakfast – at that hour every open space is filled with Tehranis exercising, singly or in groups, calisthenics to volleyball, happy to invite you to join. Next up, the [...]