Top 10 Persian Gardens of Iran
The Persian garden is the original paradise garden, the model that travelled west into the Islamic world and east into Mughal India. Nine Persian gardens are jointly inscribed as a single UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the form — char-bagh, central water channel, pavilion, surrounding walls — has shaped garden thought for 2,500 years.
1. Bagh-e Fin, Kashan
Built in 1590 under Shah Abbas I on the site of an older Safavid garden, Bagh-e Fin is the most intact of the great Persian gardens. Spring-fed water channels run the length of the central axis, feeding pools and the central pavilion. The chenar (plane) trees are several centuries old.
2. Bagh-e Eram, Shiraz
An eighteenth-century Qajar garden around a three-storey neoclassical mansion. The cypress avenue, the rose collection (Shiraz is the city of roses), and the reflecting pools along the axis make Eram the most photogenic of the Shiraz gardens.
3. Bagh-e Shahzadeh, Mahan, Kerman
A nineteenth-century Qajar pleasure garden in an extraordinary desert setting: a walled rectangle of cypresses, fruit trees and water cascades fed by qanat irrigation, with absolute desert beyond the walls. The contrast is the point of the Persian garden tradition.
4. Bagh-e Dolatabad, Yazd
Built around 1750 by Karim Khan Zand, famous for its 33-metre badgir (wind-tower), the tallest in Iran, which cools the central pavilion using only the desert wind. The stained-glass orsi windows colour the floor at certain hours.
5. Bagh-e Chehel Sotoun, Isfahan
A Safavid garden completed in 1647 under Shah Abbas II, with a long reflecting pool and a pavilion whose twenty wooden columns are reflected in the water to make 'forty columns' (chehel sotoun). UNESCO World Heritage.
6. Bagh-e Hasht Behesht, Isfahan
The Eight Paradises pavilion sits within a remnant Safavid garden in central Isfahan. The pavilion's plan, of eight octagonal rooms around a central space, is one of the most architecturally inventive in the Persian garden tradition.
7. Bagh-e Akbarieh, Birjand
An early twentieth-century Qajar garden in eastern Iran, smaller than the famous sites but unusually intact, with its mansion, qanat-fed pools and surrounding orchards still in working order. UNESCO World Heritage.
8. Bagh-e Pahlavanpour, Mehriz
A Qajar garden in Yazd province with an unusual water-channel design: the surface water runs through the central pavilion itself, cooling the interior by evaporation. The garden is still in private agricultural use.
9. Bagh-e Naranjestan-e Qavam, Shiraz
An intimate nineteenth-century town garden built around an orange grove (naranjestan). Mirrored interior halls, painted ceilings and the perfume of orange blossom in spring make this the most sensory of the Shiraz gardens.
10. Bagh-e Abbasabad, Behshahr
A Safavid mountain garden built by Shah Abbas I in the forested foothills of the Alborz, with terraces, pools and a central lake — a complete departure from the desert oasis model that defines the rest of the tradition.
Plan your next trip
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.