Sarayan Caravanserai

🕰️When was it built?

The building survives from the Safavid era and was added to the National Heritage List on 31 May 2003 as number 8733. In September 2023 it was inscribed on the World Heritage List together with a group of Iran's caravanserais. It has had several rounds of restoration, and a new one began in the summer of 2026.

🏛️What was it built for?

The caravanserai was built for travellers to stay, for storing goods and for looking after the caravan's animals. Its cells, storerooms and camel stable brought the different needs of a journey together in one complex. The camel stable, or loading area, later became the anthropology museum.

👀What you will see

• Two matching iwans face each other and rise higher than the row of cells around the courtyard.
• The cells, with arched entrances, line the courtyard, and their repetition shapes the run of the courtyard walls.
• The brick decoration of the entrance has geometric patterns and karbandi with ten- and twelve-pointed shamseh stars.
• The edges of the ribs of the entrance iwan are decorated with bricks in a woven, matting-like pattern; look up at the top of the arch to see it.

🎒Good to know before you go

• Before you go, ask whether the caravanserai and the museum can be visited.
• If restoration work is going on, don't enter the closed parts, and look at the patterns above the entrance from a distance.