Naqsh-e Jahan Square
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How it came to be
In 1598 the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I moved his capital from Qazvin to Isfahan, and from that year until 1629 the square was laid out. It measures 560 m by 160 m, almost 9 hectares, and was named Naqsh-e Jahan, Image of the World. Its chief architect was Shaykh Bahai.
The Shah Mosque stands on the south side, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque on the east, the Ali Qapu palace on the west, and on the north a portal opens into a bazaar 2 km long. The Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, begun in 1602 or 1603 and finished in 1618 or 1619, was a private mosque for the court and is named after a scholar who was the shah's father-in-law. Ali Qapu rises 48 m over six floors, and the shahs watched polo in the square from its upper galleries.
Pietro Della Valle, an Italian who came in 1617, judged the square superior to anything in Constantinople or anywhere in Christendom. Known as Shah Square before 1979, it is now also called Imam Square. It was registered as a national monument in 1932 and inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1979.
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