Ali Qapu

Ali Qapu closes the western side of Isfahan's great square, Naqsh-e Jahan, directly facing the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque across the open ground. The name joins an Arabic word for "exalted" with a Turkic word for "gate" — the Lofty Gate — because the building was literally the ceremonial entrance to the royal quarter behind it. It rose in the early seventeenth century at the command of Shah Abbas the Great, who moved the Safavid capital to Isfahan in 1598 and set about rebuilding the city around this vast rectangle, some 560 by 160 metres.

From the square the palace reads as a tall block of six storeys, about 48 metres high, fronted by a deep raised veranda, the talar. Its flat wooden ceiling rests on eighteen slender wooden columns, and from here the shahs watched polo, parades and horse races on the ground below, and on the top floor they held receptions and banquets. The talar was a later addition to a building that grew in several stages, which is why the interior feels like a stack of distinct rooms rather than a single plan.

Inside, the walls were painted by Reza Abbasi, the leading court artist of Shah Abbas, and his pupils: flowering branches, animals and birds, delicate against plain grounds. The highlight is the music room on the top floor. Its walls and vaults are cut into a honeycomb of stucco niches shaped like jars, bottles and vessels — decorative, but also acoustic, softening the echo so that music played there sounded clear. It is one of the most original interiors of the Safavid age and repays a slow look at how the shapes nest inside each other.

Ali Qapu belongs to the Naqsh-e Jahan ensemble inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, alongside the Shah Mosque on the south side and the Qeysarie gate to the bazaar on the north. Seen from the talar at dusk, with the domes and arcades of the square laid out below, the building still does exactly what it was built for: it gives the best seat in the city.

Getting there

The palace stands on Naqsh-e Jahan Square in the centre of Isfahan, about 0.6 km from the city centre. Isfahan Shahid Beheshti International Airport (IFN) is about 22 km away. The square is pedestrian and easy to reach on foot or by taxi from anywhere in central Isfahan.