5 Days in Baku

The Shirvanshahs ruled a medieval state along this stretch of the Caucasus, and in the 15th century Ibrahim I moved their capital here from Shamakhi after a devastating earthquake. The Palace of the Shirvanshahs, started in 1411 on the highest point of the Old City, is the result: a pale limestone complex of courtyards, the Divanhane pavilion, burial vaults, a mosque with a minaret, a mausoleum for the court sage and the remains of a bathhouse. Nothing is flashy. The carving over the doorways is the show.

Go at 10am when it opens and walk it slowly, because the interior rooms are small and bare and what you remember is the geometry and the light in the courtyards. Soviet restorers worked on it in 1932-1934 and the complex later became a museum, so expect restored stone rather than a ruin. There's no need for a guide, but read the signs in the burial vaults.

Ten minutes downhill, on the edge of the old walls, stands the Maiden Tower (Qız Qalası), a cylinder of stone about 29.5 m high with eight floors. It has been on Azerbaijani banknotes and letterheads for decades, and every tour guide in town gives a different answer about what it was for. A fire temple, a watchtower, an observatory? Its foundations may go back to the 4th-6th centuries and the upper floors are generally dated to the 12th, which is one reason the debate doesn't end. The name comes from stories of a maiden, and those vary too.

Climb the internal stairs past a small museum of the city's history to the roof. The view takes in the Old City's roofs and minarets, the Boulevard and the curve of Baku Bay, with the Flame Towers on the hill behind. It's a good reality check for the rest of the week: you can see most of tomorrow from here.

Qaynana ("mother-in-law") is on Kiçik Qala street inside the walls, a restaurant that travelers and locals both use. It's a good place for qutab, the thin stuffed flatbreads, and for the full Azerbaijani breakfast of qutab, homemade bread, eggs with tomatoes, qaymaq (clotted cream) and fruit jam if you want a late one.

Order a few small plates to share, a dish of dolma, and a pot of black tea. It's not the cheapest lunch in town, but it's the easiest first introduction to the food.

The inner lanes are where the Old City earns its UNESCO listing. Walk toward the Maiden Tower and you pass the Bukhara Caravanserai and the Multani Caravanserai, trading inns from the 15th century onward that once housed merchants from Bukhara and Multan on the Silk Road. Today they are restaurants, craft shops and a carpet seller or two; step into the courtyards even if you don't buy anything. Opposite the Maiden Tower is the Hajji Gayyib bathhouse, an old hamam you can admire from the outside whether or not it's open.

The honest verdict: the shops are for tourists, the lanes are not. Wander off the main stretch into the residential lanes where laundry hangs between the stone houses and the walls look like they were put up last week, which, given restoration, some of them were. The Old City had about 3,000 residents in 2007, so keep voices down in the evenings.

Walk out of the Old City through the gate at the northern end and you land on Fountains Square (Fəvvarələr meydanı), a pedestrian plaza that used to be called Parapet. Dozens of fountains were first built here under Soviet rule, the square was renovated in 2010 and since 2013 it has hosted a Christmas market in December and January. After business hours and on weekends it is where the whole city goes to walk, so it is at its best in the early evening.

Take a lap, sit by a fountain and watch Baku dress up. Cafes around the edge charge a premium for the view, so have your coffee on a side street if you're on a budget.

Nizami Street (Nizami küçəsi), which everyone calls Torgovaya from the Russian word for trade, is the main shopping street, named after the classical poet Nizami Ganjavi and running parallel to the Boulevard. The facades are the point: neo-Renaissance, neo-Gothic and baroque buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries sit beside 1950s-70s blocks and newer fashion stores, and some say it is among the most expensive streets in the world to rent a shop on.

You don't need to buy anything. Walk its length once, look up above the shop windows, and peel off down a side street when you're hungry. The National Opera and Ballet Theatre at number 95 gets a stop on day three.

Tea is the social glue here: black tea in a glass, jam on the side, sweets on the table. Look for a çayxana (tea house) near Fountains Square or off Nizami Street and sit for an hour. Outdoor tea houses are where backgammon (nard) and dominoes are played, and a visitor who sits down near a game and shows interest will usually get an explanation.

Don't rush. A glass lasts as long as you want it to, and ordering a pot with a plate of pakhlava turns it into dessert.

Ride the Baku Funicular, the only one in the country, from the square on Neftchilar Avenue. The 455 m line takes a couple of minutes and the view widens with every meter: the Boulevard, the bay, and the Old City's walls below. At the top you reach Martyrs' Lane (Şəhidlər Xiyabanı), a cemetery and memorial for those killed by the Soviet Army in the Black January events of 1990 and in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The Mosque of the Martyrs next to it was built with Turkish help and finished in 1996.

This is also Highland Park, the best viewpoint for the Flame Towers and the full sweep of the bay. Go in the morning when the light is clear and the lane is quiet, and keep voices low and photographs respectful around the graves. For the towers lit up, you'll come back tonight.

The Carpet Museum on the waterfront is built to look like a rolled carpet, a literal joke you only get from the sea side. It has the largest collection of Azerbaijani carpets in the world, founded in 1967 inside the Juma Mosque in the Old City and moved into this building in 2014.

Carpets are not a niche here. They are a regional language: the patterns tell you which valley a weaver came from and which generation made it. The museum shows old pile rugs, flat-weaves, embroidery and metalwork, and you leave understanding why a carpet seller in the Old City can tell where your rug is from by the border pattern. Give it an hour, and use the audio or a guide only if you want the names of the weaving schools.

Baku Boulevard (Dənizkənarı Milli Park) is a seaside promenade laid out in 1909, when oil barons were building mansions along the Caspian shore and the shoreline itself was being built up inch by inch. Today it is the city's living room: walkers, joggers, families, fountains and cafes between the Old City and the Carpet Museum, with the Flame Towers tilting over everything from the hill.

Walk from the Carpet Museum toward the Old City, with the sea on one side. You pass parks and a few museums, and there's a stretch of canals known locally as Little Venice, a small bonus rather than a reason to come. The promenade is flat, shaded in patches and long. If your feet need a break, take a bus along Neftchilar Avenue.

Midway along the Boulevard, stop at any of the cafes for the pairing you will see everywhere: black tea in a small pear-shaped glass (armudu) with pakhlava, the diamond-shaped baklava of the region, layered with nuts and cardamom and soaked in syrup. It is a staple of the spring Novruz celebrations. Ask what nut the baker used and pick the one you like.

Cafes on the Boulevard are priced for the view. If you prefer a bakery, take your pakhlava to a bench, where it tastes the same.

The Flame Towers, three skyscrapers on the hill above the bay, took from 2007 to 2012 to build. The tallest reaches 182 m. They contain a Fairmont hotel, apartments and offices, and each facade is covered in LED screens that play a fire show after dark: giant flames, the colors of the national flag, a figure waving it. The name and the shape reference Azerbaijan's nickname, the Land of Fire.

You don't go inside; you go to see them from somewhere good. Walk or take a short taxi up to the Highland Park area for the view over the bay with the towers as the foreground, or stay on the Boulevard and watch them from below. The show begins when the light has gone, so plan dinner after.

Mugham is the classical music tradition of Azerbaijan, improvised around a set of modes, and Azerbaijani jazz has borrowed from it for decades. The International Mugham Center on the Boulevard is the place to hear the real thing, and a live concert is the best way to do it. It won't sound like anything else in your playlist.

Check the center's current program in advance, because concerts are not nightly. If nothing is on, the evening still has plenty to offer along the Boulevard.

Baku's Taza Pir Mosque, on Mirzə Fətəli Axundzadə street, has two slim minarets and a marble dome and was built between 1905 and 1914. The idea and the money came from a woman, the philanthropist Nabat Khanum Ashurbeyova, which was unusual even in an oil-boom city. Inside, the painted ornament mixes Azerbaijani schools with motifs from across the Muslim world.

Dress modestly, cover your shoulders and knees, and women should bring a scarf. It's a working mosque, so avoid prayer times, especially on Fridays. Ten minutes inside is enough, and it's a good counterweight to the Old City, because you can see how the faith looked when oil barons paid for it.

The museum fills the Taghiyev mansion, an Italian Renaissance-style block built in 1893-1902 for the oil millionaire Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev and designed by the Polish architect Józef Gosławski. Four floors, an entire city block, and two ballrooms side by side on the second floor, one in Moorish style, the other in a Western one. The building is the exhibit, so the display cases are almost secondary.

Walk through the ballrooms first, then pick one gallery that interests you instead of trying to read everything. The prehistory and ethnography rooms give you the context for what you'll see at Gobustan tomorrow.

Dolma Restaurant, on Məhəmməd Əmin Rəsulzadə street a short walk from Fountains Square, makes the dish it is named for in every regional version, from grape leaves to cabbage, eggplant and pepper. Dolma in Azerbaijan is not a side: it is a main event, with yarpaq dolması (grape leaf) often called the national dish.

Order a mixed plate so you can compare the fillings, add a bowl of plov or a qutab, and finish with tea. It's a restaurant for sitting down and lingering, not rushing; there is an evening trade that runs late, so lunch is quieter.

The Heydar Aliyev Center is the building the world knows, designed by Zaha Hadid and soft-opened on 10 May 2012. It has no sharp corners: a single continuous surface folds up out of the plaza to form the walls, the roof and the entrances, spread over eight levels with a 1,000-seat auditorium, exhibition space and a museum. The name honors Heydar Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003.

Walk the plaza first and look at the building from every angle, because it changes as you move: a white wave from one side, a ship from another. Then go inside to see the interior, where the curving walls make the exhibition spaces feel like caves. The exhibitions themselves vary, so decide whether to buy a ticket based on what's showing. In the late afternoon the white surface turns gold.

The National Opera and Ballet Theatre, at 95 Nizami Street, is a Baku institution, and Azerbaijan has its own operatic tradition: the ballet Maiden Tower, composed by Afrasiyab Badalbeyli in 1940, is built on the legend of the monument you climbed on day one. The building is oil money again: it began as the Mailov Theatre, designed in 1911 by Nikolai Bayev for the oil magnate Daniel Mailov, with Taghiyev's money behind it. It is a good evening out whatever your taste for opera, because the foyer is part of the show.

Check the season's schedule online or at the box office, and dress a little smarter than for the day. If there is no performance that night, finish with a stroll back down Nizami Street.

The Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. More than 6,000 carvings cover the boulders and low cliffs, depicting people, animals, dances, boats with oarsmen, warriors and camel caravans. Estimates of their age run into many thousands of years, which puts them among the oldest art you can walk up to and look at from arm's length.

Start in the museum at the entrance, which has been in operation since 2011. A 3D exhibition sets the scene, then walk the trails between the boulders. Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl visited many times between 1981 and 2002 and argued the reed boats on the rocks pointed to ancient sea travel; the theory is debated, but it made Gobustan famous. A guide's commentary (the price is per group, so agree it at the ticket office) transforms what are otherwise faint scratches.

The trail winds through the boulder field where the best-preserved carvings are. Look for the oarsmen's boats, the dancers in a line and the bullfights, and the pits worn in the rocks. Near the entrance is the Gaval Dash, a natural musical stone about two meters long: strike it with a smaller rock and it rings like a tambourine. It is one of four singing stones in the area, and your guide will let you try.

Take your time, because the carvings reward slow looking. Some are faint until the sun is low, so late morning is better than noon.

There is little between Gobustan and the highway except roadside restaurants that cater to drivers and tour groups. They serve grilled meat, soups, flatbreads and salads, and a pot of piti, the mutton and chickpea stew cooked in a sealed crock. It is simple, filling food.

Ask your driver where he eats, and if the place is full of trucks, that's the right one. Order a plate of kebab, bread and tomatoes, and pay in manat.

Azerbaijan has nearly 400 mud volcanoes, a large share of all those on Earth, and the best of them are a short drive from the rock art reserve. They are low cones of gray clay, not dramatic peaks, with small pools that burp and bubble as gas rises through the mud. The Mud Volcanoes Tourism Complex opened in 2024, and nearby, a free open area lets you get close to the mud lakes.

At the open site, old Soviet Lada 4x4s wait to take visitors up the dirt track. The asking price starts high; the going rate is around 20-30 AZN per car, not per person, so be firm. The mud is warm and smells faintly of gas. It is dry in good weather and a mess after rain, so wear shoes you don't mind ruining.

The Ateshgah of Baku, in the Surakhani district, is a pentagonal complex with a courtyard, monks' cells around it and an altar in the middle. It was built in the 17th and 18th centuries and became a pilgrimage site for worshippers who came along the trade routes from north-west India. The name means house of fire.

The honest part: it is usually sold as a Zoroastrian temple, but the present shrine is North Indian in style, with a Hindu trident on top, and scholars still debate whether the site was Zoroastrian first. The natural flame went out in 1969 after heavy gas extraction under the area, and what burns now is fed by a gas pipe. The cells have wax figures and displays, and the whole visit takes about an hour.

Mardakan, on the north-east side of the peninsula, is a quiet suburb with a cluster of medieval buildings. The Tuba Shahi Mosque dates from 1481, and nearby stands a square-plan castle from the 12th century, the Great Mardakan Castle. Close by is the round fortress, the Small Mardakan Castle, built in 1232 according to the inscription on its tower. Both are on the same list of Caspian coastal defenses.

It's the opposite of Yanar Dag: no crowds, no tickets in the way, and a sense of a village that has always been here. Walk around the walls, climb the tower if it's open, and enjoy the quiet. Mardakan makes a good break in a day of driving.

Mardakan and the coast around it have family-run restaurants that serve grilled fish and meat, fresh salads and bread straight from the tandoor oven. Look for a place with tables outside and a grill smoking. Ask what is fresh and order that.

This is also the place to order lula kebab, minced lamb on a skewer, and a bowl of dovga, the yogurt and herb soup, if it's on the menu. Eat slowly; you need the energy for the evening.

Yanar Dag (Yanar Dağ, the burning mountain) is a hillside where natural gas seeps through porous sandstone and burns in a continuous line of flames up to 3 m high. Unlike the Ateshgah, this fire is natural: the gas rises by itself and nobody feeds it. A State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve was established here in 2007, and after a renovation in 2017-2019 a small museum and a stone exhibition opened.

Go after dark, when the flames are clearest and the hillside glows. It's a short, strange visit, a low wall of fire against a gray slope, and the wind can make it flicker and roar. Don't expect a spectacle on the scale of the Flame Towers; the point is that it is real. Take a jacket, because the hill is exposed.