Qazvin Chehelston Palace

Chehel Soton Palace is one of the most beautiful and valuable historical buildings in Qazvin, built during the Safavid period. Shah Tahmasb Safavid in 951 AH due to the attacks of the Ottoman Turks decided to move the capital from Tabriz to Qazvin.

Shah Tahmaseb ordered the chosen architects of the country to build a square garden in it and build magnificent mansions, halls, porches and beautiful basins among them. Shah Tahmaseb Safavid built it from the plan of a Turkish architect in a very small checkered pattern with very delicate and beautiful wooden windows. The pergola mansion with the head in Aali Qapo are the only surviving buildings of the Safavid garden. This garden was very large, its length was from the street located in the north of the current square to the rare yard and its width was from the front of the Post and Telegraph Office to the western wall of Bank Melli branch, but the streets destroyed a lot of this garden. A large one called Sabzeh Maidan was dedicated to the public promenade.

In this garden, there is a two-storey building (two floors) with four streets built on all four sides. The South Street was longer, wider, and much cleaner than the other streets. The sides of the streets were lined with tall sycamore trees, and the garden was covered with fruit trees.

Qazvin Chehelston Mansion

There were two ponds to the north and south of the mansion, where water always flowed into the pond from the streams around the pergola and from the stream in the middle of South Street to the rare courtyard. This mansion was known as Shah Tahmasb’s pergola before 1300 AH. The mansion has forty columns of octagons and is built on two floors with an area of ​​approximately 500 square meters.

Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion
The plan of the building has a plan with cruciform (cross) and extrovert axes. The first floor of the building has a large hall with four rooms on different sides with different geometry. The building has four porches that were open in the past and a pleasant air flow passed through it, but today it is closed with a window to enclose and preserve the decorations. This building is architecturally built in such a way that in summer, there was a pleasant air inside it. The slope of the entrance door allows airflow to be directed to the center. A portico with brick columns and semicircular arches surrounds this floor. Its plinths are made of stone and the rest are made of bricks. Almost the entire building is covered with paintings that belong to the Safavid and Qajar eras.

Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion
The first floor of the building belongs to the Safavid period, while the second floor changed a lot during the Qajar period. The upper floor also has a central hall that is larger than the upper hall. There are four earring rooms on its four sides, which were added to the building during the Qajar period. There is a circular slave around the building, which is decorated with circular brick columns on the first floor and formed with thin Qajar wooden columns on the second floor.

Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion Qazvin Chehelston Mansion
The roof of the first floor has a beautiful moqarnas and there is a pool on the floor, which is similar to the north and south of the building, and the flow of water causes pleasant air to flow inside the building. Of course, now only the central and southern basins remain and have been repaired, but the northern basin has been destroyed and the water flow has been cut off to prevent moisture.

Decorations of Chehelston Palace in Qazvin
Almost the whole building is covered with paintings. The hall is the most important and beautiful part of the building. Due to the change in the use of the building during the Pahlavi era, the governorate painted the walls and ceiling murals with plaster and whitewashed, and because the plaster did not stick to the polished surface of the paintings, most of them were preserved, which caused great damage to the building decorations. The openings that connect the hall to the porches have arches, the number and variety of which show the different periods that pass on this building. The building on the second floor is a large hall that had 5 high fountains on each side with wide sash. Its plan is square and on its 4 sides there are four earrings (rooms in the two corners of the space which are located on the upper floor) which were added to the building during the Qajar period.

Gholam surrounds the building even on the second floor, where they have placed smooth and delicate wooden columns that belong to the Qajar period. The roof of Gholam Garkesh and the hall was a khanchepo-covered frame, which had a painting in the past, but today it is covered with a layer of dark green color. This palace is a living example of architectural diversity in the Safavid era and is an octagonal structure on a 30 cm platform.

Around the porch there are brick cylindrical columns with semicircular arches that were added in the Qajar period.

The hall has four royal residences and its dimensions have probably changed in the next repairs. The second floor is covered with decorations and paintings of which nothing is left but a few paintings.

There are 3 layers of paintings on the walls of this building, the first layer is related to the Safavid period, the second layer is related to the Safavid school, and the third layer is related to the Qajar period. During the Safavid period, watercolors were used in paintings and the colors were softer, but during the Qajar period, vegetable colors were used and the colors became a little sharper.

The paintings of the Safavid period are miniature paintings with soft lines of curvature

Source of Iranian sites