Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Isfahan · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

Everyone who steps into the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque looks up, because the dome overhead is one of the loveliest things in Iran, a swirl of cream and blue tilework climbing to a central medallion. What almost nobody is told is that the dome hides a trick of light so precise it feels planned to the minute. Ringed around the base of the dome are sixteen lattice windows, and at certain times of day the sun comes through them and lays a shaft of light across the tiles, and the pattern resolves into a peacock. Its body sits at the very centre of the dome, and its shining tail is made entirely of that beam of sunlight, spreading out beneath it. As the sun moves, the tail lengthens and shifts and fades, so the bird is never quite the same twice and vanishes altogether for most of the day. The mosque was built for the private worship of the royal household, with no minarets and no courtyard, a quieter, more inward place than the great mosque across the square, and this hidden peacock feels made for exactly that, a small miracle you only catch if you happen to be standing there at the right hour, looking up. 

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.