The turquoise under the dome

From a distance the Hafezieh pavilion reads as copper green — a colour time gave the metal, not one anybody chose. But stand underneath and look up, and the soffit is turquoise.

The inversion is deliberate and has a long history in Persian architecture: the outside of a building addresses the city, the inside addresses whoever is standing under it. Turquoise is the colour of sky, and sky belongs overhead, not in front of you.

Go at dusk and the tiles change once more as the lamps come on — from the turquoise of daylight to a warmer one, with the orange of the lamps fallen into it. Most of the good photographs of the Hafezieh were taken in that twenty minutes.