The Persian garden is an idea as much as a place: a rectangle of shade and water in a dry land, divided into four parts by channels that stand for the rivers of paradise. The word paradise itself comes from an old Persian word for an enclosed garden. This one, near Pasargadae, belongs to a group of nine gardens across Iran that are listed together by UNESCO, and it is the earliest of them, laid out by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC beside his new capital.
Little survives except the bones of the design. Limestone channels, pools and basins, set in a pattern of straight lines, can still be traced among the pavilions, and they show how the engineers moved water across the plain, using gravity to carry it from springs and streams. In the dry air of the Fars plateau, a garden with running water was a statement of power, and the effect, with trees casting shade over cool pools, must have been dazzling.
The nearest town, Pasargad, is four kilometres away, and has fuel, a few small shops and tea houses. Shiraz, with its markets and its famous gardens, is about a hundred and thirty kilometres to the south-west. The road across the plain is long and straight, with views of mountains on both sides. At about nineteen hundred metres above sea level, the air is cool at night and in winter, and the sun is strong in summer.
Come in spring or autumn, when the temperatures are mild, and bring water and a hat. Early morning, when the light is soft and the plain is quiet, is the best time to walk among the old channels. The garden is a place to sit and consider how a people with little water made a paradise out of it, and how that idea travelled to the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal and a thousand courtyards in between.