Tabatabaei House, Kashan

Interesting facts

Because the owner traded in carpets, much of the stucco decoration borrows its motifs from Persian carpet designs and from bird-and-flower patterns.

The decoration is believed to have been overseen by Sani ol-Molk, court painter to Naser al-Din Shah and a close friend of the owner.

Building the house is said to have taken Ustad Ali Maryam about ten years.

The great cellar under the private quarters sits roughly 8–10 metres below street level and in summer can be 15–20 °C cooler than outside.

Windcatchers drive air down into the cellars, where a breeze drawn across the courtyard pool cools them further.

Some of the stucco window screens are carved so finely that they resemble lace fabric stretched across the openings.

Of the four courtyards, the central one served the public quarters, two belonged to the family's private wing and one was reserved for servants.

Ustad Ali Maryam also built the Timcheh Amin od-Dowleh, the celebrated domed hall of Kashan's bazaar.

The house was listed as a national monument of Iran in 1977 and restored according to its original plan in the mid-1990s.

Its rooms and courtyards have served as a set for Iranian period dramas, including the series Jeyran.

Why it is worth it

The Tabatabaei House in Kashan is one of the finest merchant houses of nineteenth-century Iran, a private palace that shows almost nothing to the street and keeps all its splendour for the inside. It was built in the Qajar period for the Tabatabaei family, whose head, Seyyed Ja'far Tabatabaei, is remembered as a prosperous carpet merchant, and it was designed by Ustad Ali Maryam, a celebrated architect of the Qajar era. From the street a visitor passes through the entrance into a courtyard of great calm, with a large pool and fountains at its centre and a symmetrical façade of arches mirrored in the water.

The house covers nearly five thousand square metres and is organised, in the traditional Persian way, around four courtyards: the biruni, where the master received guests and did business, and the andaruni, the private quarters of the family, with further rooms for servants. There are some forty rooms and several cellars, which kept the household cool in the desert summer. Everything faces inward, onto the courtyards, so that the family lived in privacy behind blank walls.

What draws the eye is the decoration. The main hall and its neighbours are dressed in fine stucco, carved in panels and niches, with interlaced patterns carved in stone, mirror work and tall windows of coloured glass. Depending on the season, the afternoon sun comes through these windows and throws pools of brilliant colour across the floors and walls, and the seven elaborate windows of the main courtyard were made to declare the owner's wealth and standing. Local tradition holds that Ustad Ali Maryam went on to build the nearby Borujerdi House when a Tabatabaei daughter married into the Borujerdi family; the two houses, a short walk apart and both restored, are best seen together.

Getting there

The house lies in the old quarter of Kashan, about 1.4 km from the city centre, in Isfahan Province. Kashan sits on the main railway line between Tehran and Isfahan and is linked by freeway to Isfahan and Qom. Kashan Airport (KKS), about 15 km away, has few flights, so most visitors arrive by road or rail. The Borujerdi House and other historic houses are within walking distance.

From the encyclopaedia

The Tabatabai House is a historic house museum in Kashan, Iran. It was built around 1880 in the Qajar era, during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, for the affluent Tabātabāei family. It is one of the prominent historic houses of Kashan and Iran, together with the Āmeri House, the Borujerdi House, and others.

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Tabatabaei House, Kashan

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia