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Day 87: In Esfahan, all roads lead to Imam Square, the second largest square in the world after Tianamen Square in Beijing but ahead of Red Square in Moscow. We entered via the maze-like bazaar from the north to catch our first glimpse of the square and its two beautiful mosques, to the east and south, and a palace of secular origin to the west.

To the east, Sheikh Abdollah mosque (also known locally as the Lady Mosque) was unique among the mosques we have seen, as it has neither minarets nor a courtyard. We entered through a beautifully decorated corridor which bent back on itself several times before disgorging us, facing Mecca in the south-west-south, into the blue and yellow-decorated dome.

To the south of Imam Sqaure lies Esfahan’s largest and most important mosque, the four-minaret Imam Mosque (also pictured above), intricately decorated with striking blue floral motifs.

To the west, the six-storey Abu Qapi Palace gave us a great view over Imam Square and a trip to the top through narrow spiral staircase where a music room was curiously decorated with sound baffles.

The entrance porch of the palace also had the surprising quality that amplified speech from opposite corners, said to once allow for easy communication between guards.

We also dropped into nearby Chehel Sotun Palace, a short walk back from the west side of the square.

While the water in the pool in front of the Palace had been drained (empty pools just don’t photograph all that well), I thought the description of the palace in the on-site plaque was forthright, honest and worth recording:

“They call it Chehel Sotun (forty-pillars), because of the number of pillars of this building and they used forty for a large number of anything. But because accidentally the number of pillars became twenty, they said that the reflection of these twenty pillars in the water pool would represent forty pillars. Chehel Sotun was used for storing the loads of people, national-religious ceremonies and feasting for foreign ambassadors and guests.”

If only carefully subedited modern guidebooks could be so illuminating.