Oudlajan is the oldest surviving neighbourhood in Tehran — a dense warren of alleys in the southern part of the old city, just east of the Grand Bazaar. It was historically the Jewish quarter of Tehran, and several of the oldest synagogues in the city survive here, some still active. The neighbourhood also contains some of the oldest surviving domestic architecture in Tehran: courtyard houses with wind towers and tile work from the Qajar era, most of them now subdivided and worn but still giving a sense of what the city looked like before the 20th century.
It is not a gentrified or prettified heritage district — it is a living, working neighbourhood where most visitors arrive by accident rather than design. For anyone interested in the older layers of Tehran beneath the concrete sprawl, an hour of walking in Oudlajan is more revealing than any museum.