Tabatabaei House
The Tabatabaei House is one of the most beautiful and historic houses in Kashan, and one of the Kashan’s tourist attractions, which was built in the second half of the 13th century in «Sultan Amir Ahmad» neighborhood. This beautiful house is dubbed as the «bride» of Iranian houses. While in Kashan we suggest you to visit this beautiful house. Kashan is famous in art, culture and religion. The people who have dedicated their museums and arts to the whole world. Signs of strength and spiritual health can be found in the remnant historic works of art. The fragrant petrichor, the beauty of old houses of Kashan and the refinement of the Fin Garden and historic great Bazaar are the inseparable pillars of the transcendent architecture of the city and its cultural zone, which once was the pathway of the silk road Caravans. Kashan’s tourist attractions, which make people travel there, contains Hundreds of historical monuments, Imamzadeh and etc. Historic houses are what attracts all the tourists among the works related to old architecture of the city, because houses are a part of the flow of routine life of all the people and you can observe them as a symbol of peace and a place for living which is so interesting for all the tourists.

The History of Tabatabaei House
Tabatabaei House has an architectural originality, a specific climate region and magnificent and gorgeous arrays, like any other historical monuments of the time. A fresh and pleasant breeze touches your face as you enter into the vestibule of this glorious house and it leads you inside the Tabatabaei House. You arrive at the beautiful and spacious Sahn (Courtyard) of the house after 20 steps down. A courtyard which its beauty astounds you for a moment. A beautiful and large Howz (a centrally positioned symmetrical axis pool, pond) has been built from one side of the Sahn to another filled with water. Six little octagonal gardens (Baghcheh) full of beautiful flowers, which are located in two sides of the big pond, doubles the refinement of the Sahn. This house has been built near the Borujerdi House and the Imamzadeh Sultan Mir Ahmad Tomb and it has been known as Tabatabaei House because it was founded by «Seyed Jafar Tabatabaei Natanzi». Tabatabaei House is a complex, containing Andaruni (a part of the house in which the private quarters are established), Biruni and Harem. This complex has 40 rooms, 4 courtyards, 4 cellars, 3 wind catchers and 2 streams of Qanat. The Tabatabaei House has a symmetrical and introverted hierarchy architectural plan with sunken courtyard. In architecture and landscape architecture, a sunken courtyard is a courtyard below ground level, which increases the stability and protects the house from earthquake, and also simplifies the irrigation and the moisture in building materials uses for plants to grow. In this case, the house has thermal insulation feature.

The Architectural Style of Tabatabaei House
This house consists of 4 courtyards, the central one is connected to the exterior space, two of them are connected to Andaruni and another one is connected to Harem. Andaruni divides into a simple Panjdari, which is between two courtyards, with wind catchers and cellars, where Tabatabaei family used to settle in. The courtyard at the northwest side is more specious and has many rooms and a separated lobby. There is a wide cellar beneath the Andaruni, specially the central room, which has its own unique feature and has caused 15 to 20 degrees of temperature difference between the basement and the outside due to various reasons such as the existence of wind catcher, rough arch, the type of the materials, cavity walls insulation, the pond which used to be at the center of the cellar, the height difference between its level and the alley level (about 8 to 10 meters) and the cool breeze that flows from the central courtyard pond to the underground. The exterior part of the house consists of a large hall (Shah’s room) at the center with light wells, colorful lattice form windows and double glazed windows that close and open vertically. This room has painting and mirror arrays and interesting stucco arrays such as lattice form plastering which looks like fine lace. There had been constructed two rooms called Gooshvareh, on two sides of the Shah-neshin. There is an Iwan with mirror and stucco arrays in front of this room and two backyards and light wells symmetrically built on two sides of the Shah-neshin with exquisite paintings and many other valuable Iranian works of art. The documents prove that the great artist and painter in the court of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Sani ol Molk, had a close friendship and family relationship with the owner of the house, so respecting the friendship that he had with the late Tabatabaei, he had monitored the paintings and stucco arrays accomplishment which greatly increases the value and credibility of the house decorations. The Harem courtyard contains the crew rooms, crew basement, kitchen and winter and summer stables, which a number of the crew rooms are unfortunately destroyed. The water was provided from two streams of Dolat abadi and Nasr abadi Qanat. The Tabatabaei House has 5 entrance doors which the main entrance is divided into internal and external entrances at the vestibule. The cause of the maze of the entrance corridors is to break the height difference and to eliminate the direct vision.

The Last Word
Due to the attractiveness of this house, Kashan’s tours, including a one-day tour, visiting the beautiful Tabatabaei house, the Agha Bozorg Mosque, Sultan Amir Ahmad Bathhouse, Fin Garden and also multi-day tours to visit the historical and beautiful nature of Kashan have been planned which are a part of the most popular tours of Iran. So the hotels of Kashan have also raised the quality of their services to other Iranian hotels (and even more) so to serve tourists. You can phonebook or you can contact with hotels in Kashan online.