Khiyaban's most famous landmark is the Blue Mosque, known locally as the Turquoise of Islam. Alongside it stands the Azerbaijan Museum, the oldest museum in northwestern Iran, and the Iron Age Museum. These institutions sit within a neighborhood bounded by the Meydanchay River to the north, the Tabriz Bazaar to the northwest, and the remnants of the Hasht Behesht Palace to the southwest. The concentration of cultural landmarks in a single district reflects Khiyaban's historical importance -- this was not a peripheral neighborhood but a center of religious, intellectual, and commercial life.

When the Constitutional Revolution swept Iran in the early 20th century, Khiyaban became one of its most important battlegrounds. Baqir Khan, a leading revolutionary figure, organized resistance from within the neighborhood's dense streets. The political activist Sheikh Mohammad Khiabani, whose very surname derives from this district, also lived here. The neighborhood's tight network of alleys, mosques, and sub-neighborhoods -- known as barzens -- provided the infrastructure for revolutionary organizing. Centuries of commercial and social life had built a community that could mobilize quickly.

The Qajar-era chronicler Nadir Mirza left a vivid account of the neighborhood's central boulevard. The road was sixty cubits wide, with water canals flowing on both sides and rows of trees planted in straight lines, offering shade the entire way. Government officials guarded the road. But by the time Nadir Mirza wrote, the old trees had decayed and been felled. When Shah Naser al-Din passed through Tabriz en route to Europe in 1290 AH (1873 AD), his crown prince Mozaffar ad-Din Shah ordered the avenue replanted with black poplar, willow, and plane trees. The boulevard revived somewhat, Nadir Mirza noted, but never fully regained its former grandeur.

The neighborhood's center was Qutb Square, which locals called Qurd Square. According to old travel accounts, the square once hosted competitions between teams from different neighborhoods that involved wolves -- likely symbolic or festive contests rather than literal animal fights. Below the streets ran the Zubayda qanat, traditionally attributed to Zubayda, wife of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, though historians doubt this connection. The qanat's water was once famous throughout Tabriz, flowing through royal palaces and supplying much of the city. Over time, competing wells and tunnels drained the qanat dry. Today the mosques remain -- Karim Khan, Salar, Haji Ahmad, Chopur -- standing as markers of a neighborhood whose layers run deeper than the streets suggest.