Persian Poetry Capital: Stained Glass Mosque, Persepolis & the City That Named a Grape Variety
📍 Shiraz, Iran📅 3-day itinerary
The city of Hafez and Sa'di — where the most-consulted book in Iranian households after the Quran is the collected poems of a 14th-century mystic whose tomb Iranians visit to open at random and read their fortune, where the world's most significant ancient Persian ruins are 60 km away, and where the Shiraz grape variety was cultivated for 2,000 years to produce the wine that medieval Arab geographers described as the finest in the Islamic world — before the prohibition made the city famous for wine poetry instead of wine.
The Stained Glass that Projects a Moving Carpet of Coloured Light Across the Prayer Hall Floor in the 90 Minutes After Sunrise & The Mirror Mosaic Interior of Millions of Glass Fragments That Sparkles Like the Inside of a Geode When Lit
The Cuneiform Inscription at the Gate Where Xerxes Declared Himself King of 23 Nations in 480 BC and the Bas-Relief Staircase Showing Their Tribute Delegations Still Legible 2,500 Years Later & The Tomb of Cyrus the Great Whose Inscription Alexander the Great Ordered Preserved After His Troops Plundered the Building Around It
The Poem Inscribed on the United Nations General Assembly Entrance Wall Written in Shiraz in 1258 by a Poet Whose Tomb Has a Spring Whose Water Is Believed to Have Healing Properties & The Grape Variety That Produces Barossa Valley Shiraz and Rhône Valley Hermitage Named After a City That Has Not Legally Made Wine Since the 7th Century