The hottest place we visited in Iran, over 35C during the day and up to 27C at night, but it was worth enduring the heat to explore the wonderful Old City.

Yazd Old City
One of the best places I’ve ever visited to get lost in. Felt very safe even at night walking solo with a camera, and the minarets of the Friday Mosque stop you from getting too lost. Happily spent hours at all times of the day exploring the seemingly endless passageways.

There are many characterful doorways throughout the Old City.

Badgirs or wind catchers are ancient air conditioning, capturing cold winds from the nearby mountains and bringing them down into buildings. They’re functional but also quite beautiful, and are a distinctive part of the skyline.

Speaking of the skyline, it is best seen from one of the many roof top cafes, and is particularly stunning captured as the sun sets.

I also particularly liked the many former wells scattered around the Old City, essential when living basically in the desert. It was amazing how quickly the temperature drops as soon as you descend a few metres underground, with it being at least 10C cooler at the bottom, though the temperature refreshment was offset by the stale air.

The Water Museum was relatively interesting, though as usual I was more interested in the architecture.

Bagh-e Dolat Abad
A typical Persian garden (generally underwhelming to my eyes) but home to the tallest wind catcher in the world (at 33m). This is also the only functioning one in Yazd, though built in 1960s after the original collapsed. There were also some stunning stained glass windows inside.

Amir Chakhmaq facade
Basically a fancy pavilion for women to observe the annual ceremony to commemorate the death of Hussein ibn Ali, but a very beautiful one. There were smaller but still impressive ones in the Old City, with the wooden structure used in the ceremony.

Bazaars
Standard across Iran but there were some particularly fancy ceilings in the main Yazd bazaar.

There are also some amazing mosques in Yazd but I’ll cover properly them in a seperate post. Here’s a taster though…

4 responses to “Yazd”

  1. Looks amazing!

  2. […] have heard of, but it is a quite astonishing and evocative abandoned mud village on the way from Yazd to […]

  3. Badgirs, wow! Such a beautiful place, and your perspectives are grand. 😊

  4. […] Iran was a bit of a blog fest with 26 posts, though justified I think given how amazing and unvisited the country is. These three were some of my favourites, a view shared by few others, Shiraz, Tehran, and Yazd. […]

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