I spent a day visit within Qazvin city (you can see the main place names bolded in below post)

I first visited very old Gate being an entrance of an ancient built complex which is now mainly function as schools (e.g. search Omid School in google map) as well as practicing Pahlevanian and zoorkhaneh rituals (The historical iranian sports which is part of UNESCO Itangible Cultural Heritage) .

After that, I gave a visit to Qazvin Museum which is not a huge museum like those in Tehran but the building was already an ancient monument itself. There were quite various important ancient used potteries, clothing’s, tools, paintings, etc here. I particularly love those ancient pottery with very cute paintings on them. From modern eyes, those paintings are like cartoon though I believe they should be meant to deliver specific messages or context in old days.

Chehel Sotun which is quite a beautiful building sitting in the central town park. This place was the royal palace back in the time when Qazvin was Iran’s capital. It now turns into a museum of calligraphy . What i also found interesting here is the inner walls of the building. For some part of walls (torn off a bit), you could clearly observe layers of paintings overlaying on one another. It’s because the building has been heavily remodelled in Qatar era and then light renovation in subsequent dynasties. The original layers of drawings on walls were covered fully by new layers of wall paintings to avoid being shown as violation of religious beliefs e.g. the original painting was showing women’s body part (or even naked) or hair , or the original paintings were showing some inappropriate actions in the eyes of religious regime throughout different eras. All these layers of paintings here demonstrates well “paradigm shift” from one era to another.

Imamzadeh Prince Hossein , this is a very beautifully decorated Shrine. It’s beautiful in both day and night as well as inside and outside. It’s a very calm and peaceful place to visit too.

Sa’d-al Saltaneh Caravanserai is definitely the highlight of Qazvin!

It is a very huge caravanserai originally built in Qajar-era. This has been restored and now become a very beautiful art and design centres for handicrafts, paintings, etc. I love so much one of the courtyard of this caravanserai (see below photo). It’s definitely stunning. I love so much walking through different canals here (not about the shoppings) but more about imagining how the old days worked in this caravanserai. How businessmen’ lived here, how the camel or stable worked, how’s living rooms looked like, etc. There are a lot of beautiful dome and arc works with different design all around different canal of this caravanserai.

Qatar Bathhouse

It’s a lovely bathhouse museum that you can visualise how the public bath house work in the past. In old days, Bath house was not purely for shower but more a social place for different types of activities or traditions to happen. for example

• It was a place for a “bridal shower” or “bachelor party” with family and relatives the day before wedding ceremony
• It was a place for the mothers of sons to source their daughter-in-laws since this was the place they can see completely how a lady look like head to toes without cover
• It was a place for shower on days after mourning period
• It was a place for business men to make deals
• It was a place for getting gossips
• It was a place for colouring hair, hair cut, body waxing services, etc

This place also explained different key tribes’ lives in Persia as well.

I was glad that I could also visited the roof top of these bath house so i can understand even better how the natural light could enter into the bath house, heating system while no one from outside can see/ peek through into the bath house. I quite like this place (though i visited quite different bath houses in different city, i still think this one is nice to visit)

Kantur Russian Church

It’s a very small old russian church here but it’s already converted as a art shop now. It’s cute to stand here to recall minority is still accepted in the country. The church was quite cute built by red bricks while a blue dome. see photos below

Qazvin Baklava @ Reza Confectionery

Highlight Highlight Highlight – FOOD ! 🙂

I normally don’t like too sweet stuff. When I came here, i didn’t expect at all i would buy any from this shops. But i was wrong. They were in fact very confident to allow you to taste different types of cookies they sold before you decide to buy or not. So i was trying one by one from originally doubtful to finally excited.

I definitely love super super much the Qazvin Baklava. It’s NOT the same as other Baklava, it’s Qazvin style. It’s multi-layered pastry mainly made by finely crushed nuts e.g pistachio, peanuts and also with saffron flavoured. Its not very sweet like other Baklava. It melts in your mouth with mix of the fine powdered nuts flavours that brought you an very fruitful tasting experience. I really love it super much that I had to buy a big box for my own consumption and started to open the box to eat right after my purchase 🙂

Other than this, other biscuits were quite good too as you can see from below photos. Many local people also came to this place to buy. You know what , my driver bought far much more boxes of cookies from the shop than me this tourist. I was impressed. I would definitely said this shop’s qazvin baklava could be a reason for me to return to visit qazvin 🙂