Negarestan Garden Museum

🕰️When was it built?

The garden was built in 1222 AH (1807–08) on the orders of Fath-Ali Shah, outside the city at the time. As Tehran grew under Naser al-Din Shah, it ended up inside the city walls. Later, buildings for a teachers' college and a higher teachers' school were added and parts of the complex changed.

🏛️What was it built for?

Negarestan was first a summer residence for the court, but later an art school, a teacher training centre and a faculty all worked here. Because the School of Fine Arts had been here, it was chosen to show the works of Kamal-ol-Molk's students.

👀What you will see

• Rooms with wooden doors and mirror-decorated halls show something of the old garden mansions.
• The Kamal-ol-Molk School Museum keeps works by the painter's direct students and later followers of his style.
• The Monir Farmanfarmaian Hall shows the artist's geometric works, combining mirror mosaic and reverse glass painting.
• Jahangir Arjmand's collection of ethnographic miniatures is one of the more unusual parts of the garden's art collections.
• Miniatures and leather mosaics by Ali Esfarjani sit alongside the paintings and other collections of Negarestan.

💡Something interesting

The name Negarestan, roughly a gallery of pictures, comes from the many paintings, portraits among them, once displayed in one of the mansion's rooms. The poet Parvin E'tesami also worked for a time as deputy librarian of the teachers' college here.