The Madrassa, Or
College, The Governor's Palace, And "Chil Situn," Or "Palace Of The
Forty Pillars," Are The Only Buildings That Still Retain Some Traces
Of Their Former Glory.
Pertaining to the former is a dome of the most
exquisite tile-work, which, partly broken away, discloses the
Mud
underneath; a pair of massive gates of solid silver, beautifully
carved and embossed; a large shady and well-kept garden in the centre
of the Madrassa, with huge marble tanks of water, surrounded by an
oblong arcade of students' rooms - sixty queer little boxes about ten
feet by six, their walls covered with arabesques of great beauty.
These are still to be seen - and remembered. With the exception of the
"Maidan Shah," or "Square of the King" - a large open space in the
centre of the city, surrounded by modern two-storied houses - the
streets of Ispahan are narrow, dirty, and ill-paved, and its bazaar,
which adjoins the Maidan Shah, very inferior in every way to those of
Teheran or Shiraz.
The palace of "Chil Situn," or "The Forty Pillars," is like most
Persian palaces - the same walled gardens with straight walks, the
usual avenues of cypress trees, and the inevitable tank of stone or
marble in the centre of the grounds. It is owing to the reflection of
the _facade_ of the palace in one of the latter that it has gained its
name. There are in reality but twenty pillars, the forty being (with a
stretch of imagination) made up by reflection in the dull and somewhat
dirty pool of water at their feet.
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