The city that survived unchanged — mud-brick wind towers, Zoroastrian fire temples, the oldest bakhlava in Persia, and the finest yazdi cake in the world
Yazd is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — a desert city at 1,230m in the centre of Iran, UNESCO-listed for its mud-brick architecture and wind towers (badgirs) that rise above the rooftops to catch and funnel cool air into buildings without electricity. It is also the spiritual capital of Zoroastrianism — the ancient Persian religion founded by the prophet Zoroaster, which preceded Islam in Iran by 1,500 years and is still practised by the Yazdi Zoroastrian community. The Towers of Silence (Dakhmas) on the hills above the city — circular open-air structures where…
Yazd appears in written records from the Sassanid period (3rd century CE) as an important Zoroastrian religious centre. When the Arab Muslim armies conquered Iran in 651 CE, Yazd was one of the last cities to fall and subsequently one of the most conservative in retaining pre-Islamic traditions — the Zoroastrian community, though reduced, maintained its temples and practices here continuously for 1,400 years of Islamic rule. The fire of the Ateshkadeh Yazd fire temple has burned continuously since 470 CE (brought from another location before that). Yazd was never sacked by the Mongols (Hulagu…