Chehel Sotoun is a 17th-century pavilion and garden built for royal entertainment and receptions. The article says Abbas the Great commissioned it and Abbas II completed it, and gives 1647 as the date of construction. It names no architect or dimensions. It calls the building one of the best examples of Safavid architecture, combining painting, tiling, mirror work and muqarnas.
The name means Forty Columns, though the pavilion has twenty slender wooden columns, which appear to be forty when reflected in the pool. Four large frescoes are thought to date to around 1650, and Jean Chardin saw them in 1666 and described three royal entertainments and one battle scene. Many ceramic panels are now in Western museums.
It was listed on Iran's National Heritage List in 1932, and UNESCO included it in 2011 as part of the Persian Garden. It operates as a museum, with artworks from different periods of Iranian history in its central hall.
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