Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
The next day we were free to explore the wonderful city of Esfahan. Gabrielle and Robert kindly allowed me to tag along with them and after breakfast we headed out into the already sweltering heat. Because of the heat we decided to walk through the beautiful lush and shaded Persian gardens that hug the side of the riverbank. It's just a shame that there isn't actually water in the riverbank!
After an hour of walking we arrived at the Armenian Quarter of the city, which dates back to the 1600's. The reason why the Armenian's settled here is because Shah Abbas I transported a colony of Christians from Armenia to Iran as he sought their skills as merchants, entrepreneurs and artists. He ensured that their religious freedom was respected so our first stop was the Armenian Cathedral. Built between 1648 and 1655 it was a stark contrast to the many mosques that I had seen so far in Iran. It's exterior is quite plain but the interior is opulently decorated with scenes from the bible. It was really beautiful and full of colour. From the Cathedral we headed next door into the Armenian museum. The museum is dedicated to the history of the Armenian people wihtin Esfahan and Iran. There were hundreds of artifacts from 700 year old bibles to 18th Century Armenian passports. What I found most interesting was an exhibiton on the Armenian Genocide, which took place in 1915. In April of 1915 the Ottoman authorities (now the Republic of Turkey) rounded up and arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and Community Leaders in Constantinople. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the first phase was the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert. The deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. The total number of people killed is believed to be between 1 and 1.5 million. I like Robert and Gabrielle had never even heard of this genocide and it was really quite sobering to read all about it.
From the Armenian Quarter we headed back to the hotel only stopping for Robert to get a haircut and for lunch. We found a really lovely local restaurant where they were baking bread in a clay oven at the front of the restaurant. We had rice, aubergine stew, vegetable stew, youghurt with cucumber, bread and drinks and it came to £3 for the three of us!
After lunch we headed to the Abbasi Hotel, where we had eaten on the first night. At the rear of the hotel's courtyard there is a teahouse, which is set amongst the beautiful hotel gardens. It was so lovely just to sit there for a couple of hours drinking tea, reading, chatting oh and eating saffron ice cream!
That night Robert, Gabrielle and I headed back along the river (OK the dirt bank that is sometimes a river!) to see the Khaju Bridge. There are 11 bridges that cross the Zayandeh River 6 are new but the rest were built as far back as 1599. The Khaju Bridge is seen as the finest of all the bridges in Esfahan and was built in 1650. It has two levels of terraced arcades and in the evening it comes a live as a meeting place for the locals. We walked over the bridge, which was full of people and when we headed down to the lower terrace we came across groups of people singing tradtional Farsi songs. We stood around and listened to some of the singing before heading back to the hotel.
- comments