The Best Persian Paradise Gardens
The Persian paradise garden — bagh in Farsi, the root of the word 'paradise' in many Indo-European languages — is the conceptual ancestor of almost every formal walled garden in the western tradition. The defining elements are enclosing walls, water as central architectural element, and the four-part char-bagh plan.
Bagh-e Fin, Kashan
The textbook Persian garden, built 1590 under Shah Abbas I, with spring-fed water channels and central pavilions. UNESCO Persian Gardens inscription.
Bagh-e Eram, Shiraz
Eighteenth-century Qajar garden with the country's most photographed cypress avenue.
Bagh-e Shahzadeh, Mahan
The Prince's Garden in absolute desert, the highest contrast between green enclosure and dry exterior in the Persian tradition.
Bagh-e Dolatabad, Yazd
The 33-metre wind tower cools the central pavilion using only the desert wind — Persian environmental design at its finest.
Bagh-e Chehel Sotoun, Isfahan
Safavid garden completed 1647 under Shah Abbas II, with the famous 'forty columns' pavilion.
Bagh-e Akbarieh, Birjand
An unusually intact early twentieth-century Qajar garden in eastern Iran.
Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz
A small contemplative garden around the tomb of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet — secular shrine and paradise garden in one.
Tomb of Saadi, Shiraz
A nineteenth-century garden around the tomb of another medieval Persian poet, with characteristic central pool reflecting cypresses.
Explore on the map
All of the gardens mentioned in this article are pinned on the interactive map. Use it to plan a route, group nearby sites into a single trip, or compare gardens by style and season.