Investigations have started into the illegal demolition of the iconic Na’el House in Isfahan Province. The structure was brought down by hitherto unknown people a week ago, authorities at Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization announced Monday.
Mohammad Hassan Talebian, deputy for heritage affairs at ICHHTO, said the building, which was registered on the National Heritage List in 1975, was destroyed late last week.
“The perpetrators were seemingly among the residents who wanted to widen the street,” Donya-e-Safar, a news website on tourism, quoted the senior official as saying.
According to regulations, the offenders will be persecuted, he said.
In a move to rebuild the national site, the ICHHTO has deployed a restoration team to Isfahan to prepare the groundwork for reconstructing the site as per available designs and documents.
“The team should not have problems in reproducing the original design because the architectural details are in the dossier,” Talebian said.
According to the mansion’s national inscription dossier, “The building has a strong foundation and will need some restoration. With enough care and attention it can once again become one of the most noticeable (restored) ancient sites.”
The historical house of Na’el was built by an Egyptian merchant during Aq Qoyunlu tribal federation that ruled between 1378 and 1501 in parts of Iran. Unique features like Muqarnas (a form of ornamented vaulting in which a squinch is subdivided into a large number of miniature squinches), arches, architectural designs, saloons with interior mirror decoration and stucco designs had made the Na’el mansion one of the outstanding Iranian homes of olden times with the potential to gain UNESCO status.
