Kerman is an ancient desert city in southeastern Iran, about a thousand kilometres from Tehran. It sits at the edge of the Lut Desert — one of the hottest places on earth — and has been a crossroads of trade for two millennia. The city was known as Botia in Achaemenid times, and its position on the old routes between the Persian Gulf and Central Asia made it a natural centre for commerce.
Today Kerman is best known for its carpets, hand-woven in hundreds of small workshops across the city. The bazaar is one of the longest in Iran, a covered labyrinth of brick vaults that stretches for several kilometres. Other highlights include the Ganjali Khan complex — a seventeenth-century square with a bathhouse, mosque, mint, and caravanserai — and the Shazdeh Garden in nearby Mahan, a Persian garden fed by underground channels with views of snow-capped mountains.
Kerman also serves as the gateway to the spectacular Kaluts of the Lut Desert — wind-sculpted rock formations that look like a ruined city — and to the ancient citadel of Bam, about 190 km to the southeast.