Tabatabaei house

There are a couple of buildings in the corner of a historical district in Kashan named Soltan MirAhmad, which is close to the temple of Soltan Amir Ahmad. This building, due to its beautiful design is known as the ‘bride of Iranian houses’ and is a masterpiece in the old architecture style.

The house is of a 44730 square meters vastity and contains many different parts of different functions. Every corner of this place has been made according to an intelligent principle to make sure that all the needs of the people are met.

The owner of the house of Tabatabaeis, was an international carpet dealer from Natanz and a resident of Kashan who was known as Seyyed Jafar Tabatabaei.

Around 1835, he decided to make a luxury house for his family. Therefore, he hired one of the best architects to design and build the house.

The house contains many parts e.g. the entrance, alcove, the mirror hall, the outer and inner rooms, the cellar and the personnel room.

In the course of the construction of Tabatabaei house, they used the garden pit method and the introverted architecture, and all of the parts of the house is symmetric. The house contains four yards and aprons where the yards belong to the outer sight. In addition, two yards belong to the inner part and one to the personnel.

The inner part contains a five doored room in the middle, two yards in the sides and cellars that make the air circulate in the place and was the resident to the Tabatabaei family. Below the inner side, there is a big cellar which is unique on its own right and due to many windproof, a cross-like roof, the type of material used as well as the walls being two-shelled and the pool, causes a 15-20 temperature difference in the cellar and the outer side.

In the construction of the old houses, not only weather conditions were considered, but also Islamic and cultural principles were of a great importance, which means, the inner side of the houses is not visible from the outside and one cannot see the inside house even from the other roofs. In addition to all of these, all of the inner parts of the house are hidden from the other parts.