Noushabad (Ouyi) – An Ancient Underground City

Those readers who are interested in tourism, architecture, history, literature or even mystical places, you should visit this underground city of Noushabad, which was built 1500 years ago by Ancient Persians. Many of you have not heard about this city earlier because nobody knew about the city until 2005, as it was accidentally discovered in 2006, when local people were digging the ground for constructing well.

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This underground city of Noushabad (Ouyi) is situated 5km north from Kashan, Isfahan province, Iran. It only take 20minutes drive to reach from Kashan to Noushabad. You can even use a local taxi to visit this place. This underground city of Noushabad (Ouyi) was built by one of the Kings from Sassanid Empire 1500 years ago.

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The King was passing through the area, he stopped to drink water from a well, and he realized that the water was pure and cold. Although, the entire area from which he was passing through was extremely hot.  After that, the King ordered to build an underground city and gave that city the name of Anoushabad, which later turned into Noushabad. The word Noushabad means “Cold tasty water”.

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There were many reasons for constructing the underground city. First reason was that entire region was extremely hot during daytime while it was quiet cold during nights. Therefore, underground city was best place to spend time during daytime. Another reason to build an underground city was to escape foreign attacks from invaders, as it was best place to take refuge.

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The depth of this city varies from 4 to 18 meters. It is one of the largest underground cities in entire world. To enter this underground city, there were several openings during that period. Some of the opening were directly made from the residence of local people while other openings were built at public gathering places. So, people could easily enter inside the underground city in case of any threat.

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This is still a three-storied underground city, which was a secret city during that time with all basic facilities. For instance, Air ventilation facilities, water and food supply, toilets and separate places and portions for families. People living inside could easily survive many days without even going outside. Now this beautiful underground city is a masterpiece of exploration for researchers and research still continues.

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ACCORDING TO AUTHOR RAZIEH TAHERI FROM IRAN

“When we talk about Kashan in today’s world, there are many sites to visit near Kashan like Sizan Brick Castle, Bazaar of Kashan, Jameh Mosque of Kashan, Ishagh Abad Bridge but biggest  attraction for tourists is none other than The Underground City of Noushabad. It can be said that the underground city of Noushabad reminds us about one of the masterpieces of ancient times. The way it was made artistically by the engineers and architects of that time is treat to watch and teaches us in today’s modern world a lot about both history and architecture. Engineers purposefully made three levels inside this underground city in order to make sure, if enemies try to attack them at upper most level, then people who were residing at middle or lower most level could easily make their strategy to escape and launch their counter attack.

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Another fascinating fact about this underground city is that we find curvy passages along with some tricky paths. For instance, digging deep holes in the middle of the rooms and they were covered artistically with rotating stones in such a way that if anyone tries to step them, he suddenly falls deep inside at lower chamber. Lamps were kept beautifully after every one to five metres distance for clear vision of people living inside the underground city. We find countless tricky tactics, which were used by intellectual brains of ancient past, which are still delight to explore as a tourist and at the same time we learns a lot from them. Even today, there are many parts of the underground city, which connects underground world to the outer world, but these parts are still under exploration. Therefore, some parts of the underground city are still not opened for visitors.

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All in all, it can be concluded that this underground city is masterpiece of glorious historical architecture and it is even included in Iran’s heritage list.”

(NOTE: We are thankful to the following resources that helped us in our research)

https://surfiran.com/nushabad-the-mysterious-underground-city-in-iran/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nushabad-underground-city