Dowlat Abad Garden

Dowlat Abad Garden in Yazd was laid out around 1750 for Mohammad Taqi Khan, a local governor of the Zand period. It is one of the Persian gardens listed together by UNESCO in 2011, and its claim to fame is not a pool or a pavilion but a tower: its badgir, or windcatcher, about 33 metres high and often described as the tallest in Iran.

A windcatcher works as a chimney in reverse. Vertical shafts inside the tower open to the breeze on several sides; moving air is caught and directed down into the building, while warm air escapes. At Dowlat Abad the shaft rises above an octagonal pavilion, and in the old days the cooling air passed over a small pool at its foot before spreading into the rooms.

The pavilion is also a showcase of orosi, sash windows with wooden lattices filled with coloured glass, which throw patches of red, blue and green across the floor as the sun moves. Outside, a long pool runs between rows of pines and cypress towards the gate. Yazd is a city of windcatchers, and this is the place to understand how they work: stand under the tower on a hot afternoon and you can feel the difference.