Yazd Water Museum
The water museum is located north of Amir Chakhmaq square in the city of Yazd (region of the same name) and its construction dates back to the years between 1266 and 1269 of the solar Hegira. It in the year 1379, in conjunction with the first international conference on Qanat, started its business as a museum.
Located in one of the ancient town houses called Kalāhduzhā, it showcases the history of water over a few thousand years in this desert landscape. What distinguishes it from other water museums is the passage in it of a Qanat a hundred years old.
The museum building has five floors divided as follows:
-first floor, place of the bifurcation of two Qanat: Rahim Ābād and Zāraj with over 2000 years of age, 75 km long, still active today.
-second floor o payab: food storage place. The payab is an octagonal warehouse with a tank in the center to store various foods with an almost fixed temperature of 14 degrees in all seasons of the year and the water of the Qanat flowing through it keeps the air humid.
-third floor, summer residence with rooms and numerous corridors to spend the hot and exhausting days of summer.
-fourth floor, place of residence with rooms panj dari (characterized by five large contiguous windows) Talar (porches supported by slender wooden columns), rooms with sash windows, kitchen and place where the house service staff lived.
- fifth floor or roof known as chahkhane (lett: casa del pozzo) through which two people in charge of extracting water from Qanat, with the use of the well wheel, they picked it up and then poured it into a container for the family members on the ground floor to use it for drinking and for domestic purposes.
In this house you can see pipes of about 150 years old. The stuccos of the Kalāhduz house present images of flora and fauna; the hall of mirrors, sash windows and polychrome glass are other noteworthy elements of this house.
In this museum are preserved almost over 200 historical objects related to water such as dishes and containers to store and transport it, various tools necessary for the excavation of Qanat, special picks, the wheel of the well, the dress of the water well digger, the tools to measure the volume of water, a model of the way the water of the Qanat and the means to procure the light inside, statues of well diggers with white clothes, documents of the principal ones Qanat of Yazd also related to the sharing and donation of water.
Among these documents, some marriage extracts also stand out because at that time some people established that the dowry due to the consort consisted of water!