Restoration of Historic Monuments

The bazaar portal, with its seven-colour tiles and Thuluth inscription, is the complex's signature. Damp, pollution and poor repairs in past decades had stripped the glaze from many tiles and brought down several rows of arabesque patterns.

After complete documentation by photography and laser scanning, the original tiles were cleaned and consolidated, and only the missing parts were replaced — with glazes recreated in the endowment's workshop from Safavid samples. Each new tile carries a hidden mark so future researchers can tell it from the original.

To restore is to intervene so little that the building can speak for itself.

With its brick dome and windcatchers, the Ganjali Khan cistern once kept the neighbourhood's drinking water cool and clean. Years of disuse had filled the reservoir with debris and worn down its stairway.

The reservoir was cleared and sealed, the windcatchers rebuilt and the stairway restored with the original stone. Today the cistern hosts an exhibition on "water culture in the desert", where visitors can see its natural cooling at work.