Jameh Mosque of Yazd

The congregational mosque of the city, built in the fourteenth century under the Muzaffarids on the site of an earlier place of worship and, according to tradition, of a Zoroastrian sanctuary before that. Its main distinguishing mark is the tallest portal in Iran: the pair of minarets rises forty-eight metres, and from most points of the old town they are visible above the flat clay roofs. The portal is faced entirely with tile mosaic in turquoise and blue tones, with inscriptions in thuluth script along the edge of the arch. Behind it opens a courtyard with a pool and four iwans, and the prayer hall is covered by a dome on muqarnas vaulting. The mosque stands at the end of a covered passage of the bazaar, so you approach it out of the half-dark and step out straight under the portal — the effect is calculated. The image of the minarets was engraved on the Iranian two-hundred-rial banknote. In the evening the lighting makes the tiles colder and more contrasting than they are under the daytime sun.

On the map