Introducing Shiraz

Shiraz is a city of sophistication that has been celebrated as the heartland of Persian culture for more than 2000 years. Known as the Dar-ol-Elm (House of Learning), the City of Roses, City of Love and City of Gardens, Shiraz has become synonymous with education, nightingales, poetry and wine. It was one of the most important cities in the medieval Islamic world and was the Iranian capital during the Zand dynasty (AD 1747–79), when many of its most beautiful buildings were built or restored.

There are the usual Iranian traffic issues, but Shiraz’s agreeable climate, set as it is in a fertile valley once famed for its vineyards, makes it a pleasant place to visit (except at the humid height of summer or the freezing depths of winter).In his 1893 book A Year Amongst the Persians,Edward Browne described Shirazis as ‘…amongst all the Persians, the most subtle, the most ingenious, the most vivacious’. And even in Iran, where regional one-upmanship is common, everyone seems to like Shirazis. This is a city of poets and home to the graves of Hafez and Sa’di, themselves major pilgrimage sites for Iranians. Shiraz is also home to splendid gardens, exquisite mosques and whispered echoes of ancient sophistication that reward those who linger longer than it takes to visit nearby Persepolis.

Introducing Esfahan

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Esfahan is Iran’s masterpiece, the jewel of ancient Persia and one of the finest cities in the Islamic world. The exquisite blue mosaic tiles of Esfahan’s Islamic buildings, its expansive bazaar and its gorgeous bridges demand as much of your time as you can spare. It is a city for walking, getting lost in the bazaar, dozing in beautiful gardens, and drinking tea and chatting to locals in the marvellous teahouses. More than anything else, though, Esfahan is a place for savouring the high refinements of Persian culture most evident in and around Imam Sq – the Imam Mosque, Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Ali Qapu Palace and Chehel Sotun Palace.

There are, however, some less- than- refreshing elements to the city of Esfahan. This is the country’s third-largest city and capital of Esfahan province, and the outskirts are home to plenty of heavy industry, including a much-discussed nuclear facility. So Esfahan has traffic jams and air pollution; the long-awaited underground railway should help – if indeed it is ever finished.Such is Esfahan’s grandeur that it is easy to agree with the famous 16th-century half-rhyme ‘Esfahan nesf-e jahan’(Esfaan is half the world). Robert Byron was slightly more geographically specific when he ranked ‘Isfahan among those rarer places, like Athens or Rome, which are the common refreshment of humanity’. Today it is a Unesco World Heritage site.