Chehel Sotoun

Chehel Sotoun means forty columns, and the name is a play: the pavilion has twenty slender wooden columns along its front veranda, and their reflection in the long pool in front doubles them. Shah Abbas II completed it in the 1640s as a reception hall for entertaining ambassadors and guests, set in a formal garden of the fourfold Persian type, and the great hall inside carries six large historical wall paintings showing Safavid rulers receiving foreign envoys and campaigning, along with smaller panels of court life in a more intimate register. Mirror work and painted ceilings run through the veranda and the smaller rooms. The garden around it is one of the nine sites inscribed together as the Persian Garden.

What you actually see

• Twenty columns doubled in the pool - the reflection that gives the name.
• Six large historical wall paintings - Safavid receptions and campaigns.
• Mirror and painted ceilings - the decoration of the veranda and side rooms.
• The fourfold garden plan - the Persian garden the pavilion sits in.

When to go

March to May and September to November. One to two hours. Late afternoon light along the pool is the classic view. Spring brings the garden into leaf, which is when the reflection works best.

Honest expectations

The wall paintings are high and dim and hard to read without patience. The pool is sometimes drained for maintenance, which removes the entire point of the name. The garden is smaller than the inscription suggests. It is busy in the afternoon.

Nearby

Naqsh-e Jahan square is a short walk east; Hasht Behesht garden is nearby.