Iran · Isfahan Province
Where to Stay in Kashan, Isfahan Province
Kashan is an old oasis city of central Iran at the edge of the great desert, famous for its Persian gardens, wind-towered mansions, and rosewater.
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Where to stay in Kashan
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Where you stay in Kashan turns on the old town or the garden edge. The lanes of the old quarter keep the merchant houses, the mosque, and the bazaar within a walk, and staying in a restored old house suits anyone here for the city. Wind-towers rise over the roofs.
Courtyards hide cool gardens. Out toward the Fin garden and the desert, the town gives way to orchards, the old spring, and the open sands. A room by the garden trades the old lanes for the cypress walks, the rose fields, and the quiet of the desert edge.
The dunes run east past the town. Stay in the old town for the houses, or by Fin for the garden. The bazaar lies a short walk in.
About Kashan
Kashan is the desert-edge city of gardens and merchants.
What is Kashan known for?
On the rim of the central desert below the mountains, it grew rich on silk, carpets, and rosewater, and it keeps the lush Fin garden with its old spring, the grand wind-towered houses of its merchants, the tall Agha Bozorg mosque, and the ancient mound of Sialk. Cool gardens hide behind the walls. The desert glares beyond the town.
What are the main landmarks in Kashan?
The Fin garden is the pride of Kashan. The old walled garden of cypress and water, fed by a spring that has run for centuries, lies at the desert's edge, the emblem of the city, outside the town. Grand houses hide in the old town.
The wind-towered mansions of the merchants stand behind high walls, while the Agha Bozorg mosque, the old bathhouse, and the covered bazaar mark the streets of Kashan.
What is the history of Kashan?
Kashan is among the oldest inhabited places on earth. People lived at the mound of Sialk on its edge more than seven thousand years ago, raising one of the first ziggurats of the ancient world. Life clung to the water.
The springs and streams off the mountains drew farmers to the desert edge here long before history was written. In later ages it grew rich on craft and trade. Kashan became famous across Persia for its silk and carpets, its tiles and its rosewater, and its merchants built great houses cooled by wind-towers around hidden gardens.
Kings loved its gardens. A Safavid shah laid out the Fin garden by the old spring, where a great minister of Persia was later murdered in the bathhouse, and the town kept its mosques and mansions through the centuries. The gardens still run with spring water.
Kashan keeps its gardens and its houses on the desert edge.
Where is Kashan?
Kashan lies on the western edge of the great central desert of Iran, at the foot of the Karkas mountains. The city stands where the mountain streams die out into the sand, a green oasis of gardens and orchards on the desert rim, with the salt flats of the Dasht-e Kavir stretching east. Bare peaks rise to the west.
The desert runs flat to the east.
What is the climate of Kashan?
Kashan keeps the weather of the desert: burning heat and almost no rain. Fierce summer heat and cold winters cross the desert edge, with almost no rain and wide swings between day and night, though the mountain water keeps the gardens green. The sun blazes over the sand.
Cool nights follow the burning days.
How do you get to Kashan?
Kashan lies in central Iran, on the road and rail between Tehran and Isfahan. Fast trains and the highway run to it across the desert from both cities, and the airport of the capital is not far. Desert roads run out to Abyaneh and the sands.
Tehran lies north up the road.
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Updated August 2026