Chehel Sotoun Palace

I nearly walked past Chehel Sotoun the first time, which tells you something about how Isfahan trains your eye. After Naqsh-e Jahan Square, a garden pavilion with a wooden porch seemed modest. Then I saw the pool.

The Math of the Name

Chehel Sotoun means Forty Columns, and the palace has exactly twenty — twelve slim wooden ones holding up the entrance veranda, plus a handful more scattered further in. The other twenty exist only in the long reflecting pool that runs the length of the garden in front of it. Shah Abbas II built it in the 1640s as a reception hall for foreign dignitaries, and whoever designed that pool understood exactly how photographs work three centuries before cameras existed. Stand at the far end at midday and the doubling is so exact it looks retouched.

What the Walls Actually Say

Inside, the real reason to visit isn’t the columns at all. The great hall is covered floor to ceiling in frescoes commemorating Safavid military victories and royal banquets, and unlike the abstract geometric tilework everywhere else in the city, these are figurative — battles against the Uzbeks, a reception for a Mughal envoy, dancing girls, wine cups mid-pour. Lia stood in front of one panel depicting a battle scene for a long time, pointing out how the horses were painted mid-stride with more anatomical accuracy than she expected from the 1600s. A caretaker told us, almost apologetically, that some of the wine-drinking scenes were painted over during more conservative periods and only uncovered again during restoration. History leaves fingerprints.

We sat afterward on the pool’s edge with a paper cone of roasted pistachios bought from a vendor outside the garden gate, watching a group of Isfahani teenagers stage their own photo, arranging themselves so the columns lined up behind them in the water. Some traditions never go out of style.

When to go: Late morning, when the sun sits high enough to light the frescoes through the hall’s tall windows without yet flattening the reflection in the pool. Spring and autumn keep the surrounding garden green and the water still.