Azerbaijan
Baku
The largest city on the Caspian pairs a walled medieval core with towers shaped like flames, on a peninsula where the ground itself still burns.
Baku is Azerbaijan's capital and the largest city on the Caspian Sea, spread around a wide bay on the Absheron peninsula. At its heart is a walled medieval city of stone lanes, caravanserais and the Maiden Tower, ringed by the mansions of a 19th-century oil boom and, on the hill above, the three glass Flame Towers that blaze over the bay after dark. Just outside town are a fire temple, a hillside that burns on natural gas, mud volcanoes and thousands of years of rock art.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
Azerbaijani, Russian
Currency
AZN
Timezone
UTC+4
Why you'll love Baku
Old beside new a walled city of stone lanes, mosques and caravanserais sits directly below a skyline of glass towers, with the seafront boulevard tying the two together
Oil-boom architecture the first oil millionaires built mansions and palaces in every European style, from Venetian Gothic to Italian Renaissance, along the streets just outside the old walls
Fire in the ground a temple where pilgrims once tended flames fed straight from the earth, and a hillside where leaking gas burns day and night
Food saffron plov under a crust of lavash, herb-stuffed qutab, tiny dushbara dumplings, and black tea poured endlessly with fruit preserves and pakhlava
Best time to visit
Apr-Nov
13-30° days
40.376° N, 49.833° E
UTC+4 · Asia/Baku
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Weather & when to go to Baku
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Nov
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Baku
No month grades avoid. December to March grade ok rather than great: cool and often grey, with the sea wind making it feel colder than the thermometer says. Wind is the real local quirk in any season: Baku is nicknamed the city of winds, and the northerly khazri can gust hard along the seafront.
Top things to do in Baku
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Icherisheher - the walled Old City
history 👍 PopularThe UNESCO-listed medieval core, still ringed by its stone walls: a hillside knot of lanes, small mosques, caravanserais and old bathhouses, with carpet dealers and small museums tucked into courtyards. People still live here, which keeps it from feeling like a set. Go at dusk, when the lanes quieten and the Flame Towers light up above the walls.
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Maiden Tower - Baku's oldest symbol
historyA massive stone tower at the seaward edge of the Old City, of disputed age and purpose: some date it to the 12th century, others far earlier. A legend of a maiden who leapt from its top gave it the name. Inside, floors of exhibits lead up to a rooftop view over the walls and the bay.
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Palace of the Shirvanshahs - the royal complex
history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe 15th-century seat of the Shirvanshahs at the top of the Old City: a palace, a domed octagonal court pavilion, a royal burial vault, a mosque and minaret, and the sunken remains of a bathhouse, all in pale stone. It is the grandest medieval building in Baku and the best single visit inside the walls.
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Flame Towers and Highland Park - the view over the bay
scenic 👍 PopularThree curved glass towers on the hill above the Old City, their facades turning into animated flames after dark. Highland Park beside them, reached by funicular from the seafront, gives the classic panorama of the bay and the city, and holds the Alley of Martyrs, a national memorial. Come for sunset and stay for the light show.
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Heydar Aliyev Center - Zaha Hadid's white wave
culture arts 👍 PopularZaha Hadid's cultural centre, a single white surface that rises out of the ground and folds over itself in one unbroken curve, with barely a straight line anywhere. Inside are changing art and design exhibitions, but most people come for the building itself and the sloping lawns around it.
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Baku Boulevard - the seafront promenade
scenicA park-lined promenade running for kilometres along the bay, first laid out in the early 1900s and the city's evening stroll ever since. It passes fountains, cafes, a ferris wheel and a small canal quarter built to look like Venice, with the Old City walls and the Flame Towers always in view.
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Azerbaijan Carpet Museum - the rolled-carpet building
culture artsThe national carpet collection, in a seafront building shaped like a half-unrolled carpet. Knotted pile rugs and flat-woven kilims are grouped by the weaving schools of each region, each with its own motifs. Azerbaijani carpet weaving is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and this is the best primer before browsing the Old City dealers.
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Ismailiyya Palace and the oil barons' mansions
historyThe streets just outside the walls are lined with the houses of the first oil millionaires. The Ismailiyya Palace is pure Venetian Gothic and now houses the Academy of Sciences, the Mukhtarov Palace is a spiky French Gothic fantasy, and Taghiyev's mansion, now the National History Museum, keeps restored rooms that show how the oil rich lived.
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The Azerbaijani table - plov, qutab and teahouses
foodThe cooking draws on Persian, Turkic and Caucasian traditions: saffron plov, including shah plov baked inside a crust of lavash, qutab flatbreads folded around herbs or meat, tiny dushbara dumplings in broth, lyulya kebab and vine-leaf dolma. Meals end in a teahouse, with black tea in pear-shaped glasses, fruit preserves on the side and diamond-cut pakhlava.
Best areas to stay in Baku
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Icherisheher (Old City)
First-time visitors $$Walled medieval lanes, boutique hotels
Explore hotels in Icherisheher (Old City) →
Fountain Square and Nizami Street
Food & nightlife $$Pedestrian heart of the oil-boom city
Explore hotels in Fountain Square and Nizami Street →
Neftchilar Avenue and the Boulevard
Sea views & luxury $$$Seafront avenue of international hotels
Explore hotels in Neftchilar Avenue and the Boulevard →
Bilgah and the north Absheron coast
Summer beach stays $$Summer beach resorts on the Caspian
Explore hotels in Bilgah and the north Absheron coast →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Baku
Getting to & around Baku
Getting there
Fly into Heydar Aliyev International (GYD), about half an hour from the centre by express bus or taxi
Flight
Heydar Aliyev International (GYD)
About 20 km northeast of the centre. An express airport bus runs day and night to 28 May, the central metro and rail hub, in around 40 minutes, paid with a BakuCard from machines in the terminal. Taxis and ride-hail cars take about half an hour in light traffic.
Drive
The overland route in is from Georgia, by road from Tbilisi, most often via the Red Bridge crossing. Land-border access for foreign travellers has been restricted for long periods, so check before relying on it. There is no open border with Armenia
Ferry
Port of Baku at Alat
Cargo ferries with a few passenger cabins cross the Caspian from Aktau in Kazakhstan and Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan to the port at Alat, south of the city. Sailings wait on cargo rather than a timetable, and passenger access has been restricted at times
Getting around
Metro
Three lines, the older ones Soviet-built with deep, ornate stations; the handiest stops for visitors are Icherisheher, Sahil and 28 May
TBC
Walking
The Old City, Fountain Square and the boulevard sit side by side and are best on foot, though the Old City lanes are steep and cobbled
Free
Taxi and ride-hail
App-booked cars are widely used and the simplest way to avoid haggling; the easy way out to Yanar Dag or back from a late dinner
TBC
Bus
City buses cover the whole city and run out to the Absheron suburbs, on the same card as the metro
TBC
Funicular
Climbs from the seafront up to Highland Park and the Flame Towers, saving a steep walk
TBC
Day trips from Baku
Gobustan and the mud volcanoes
Half dayRock art, mud volcanoes
A UNESCO-listed hillside of boulders carved with thousands of petroglyphs, hunters, boats, dancers and animals spanning millennia, with a good museum at the site. Nearby, local drivers in old Soviet Ladas bump visitors along dirt tracks to a field of small mud volcanoes, their cones burping cold grey mud on the steppe.
Getting there
car | tour
About an hour south along the coast by car or tour
Ateshgah and Yanar Dag
Half dayFire temple, burning hill
Two sites built on Absheron's natural gas. The Ateshgah at Surakhani is a walled fire temple where Hindu and Zoroastrian pilgrims kept a flame burning, their cells ringing the courtyard. Yanar Dag, across the peninsula, is a hillside where gas leaking from the rock burns day and night, best seen after dark.
Getting there
car | tour
Under an hour by car or tour onto the Absheron peninsula
Shamakhi
Full dayOld Shirvan capital
The old capital of the Shirvanshahs, in the foothills of the Caucasus. Its Juma Mosque, founded in the 8th century and rebuilt many times, is one of the oldest in the Caucasus, and on the road there the Diri Baba mausoleum sits built into a cliff face.
Getting there
car | bus
About 2 hours west by car or bus
Sheki
1-2 daysSilk Road mountain town
A caravan town in the forested Caucasus foothills. The 18th-century Palace of the Sheki Khans is painted inside wall to wall, with windows of tiny coloured-glass pieces set in wooden lattice without nails or glue. Stay the night to eat piti stew and Sheki halva and walk the old caravanserais.
Getting there
car | bus
About 5 hours northwest by car or bus
A little history of Baku
Baku grew as a walled port on a stretch of the Caspian where oil and gas seep out of the ground, and that has shaped it from the start: medieval traders carried the oil away by caravan, and fire worshippers came to tend flames fed straight from the earth. The Shirvanshahs, rulers of the region, built their palace inside the walls in the 15th century. Persian, Ottoman and briefly Russian rule followed before the city passed to the Russian Empire for good in 1806.
The oil boom of the late 19th century turned a small fortress town into one of the richest cities in the empire, as the Nobels and the Rothschilds moved in and local oil barons built mansions and palaces outside the walls. Baku was the capital of a short-lived independent republic from 1918, then Soviet for seventy years, and its oil fuelled the Soviet Union through the Second World War. Since independence, offshore oil and gas money has rebuilt the seafront and the skyline, and in 2016 a Formula One street circuit first raced around the Old City walls.
The Shirvanshahs build their palace complex inside Baku's walls
Russian forces take Baku, ending the Baku Khanate
The Nobel brothers found their oil company in Baku, at the heart of a boom that made the city the world's leading oil producer by 1900
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic is proclaimed, and Baku becomes its capital
The Red Army enters Baku and Azerbaijan becomes a Soviet republic
Azerbaijan regains independence as the Soviet Union breaks up
The Contract of the Century is signed with foreign oil companies to develop the offshore Caspian fields
The Walled City, with the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower, is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list
Baku hosts the Eurovision Song Contest, and Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center opens
Know before you go
Payment
Cash preferred
English
Limited
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+994
FAQs about Baku
▸ When is the best time to visit Baku?
April to November all grade great: mild in spring and autumn, and hot and dry in high summer, with highs around 30C in July and August, when locals head for the Absheron beaches. December to March grade ok: cool and often grey rather than harsh, with the wind the thing to dress for.
▸ Why is Baku called the city of winds?
Because the wind rarely stops for long. The khazri, a cool northerly, can blow hard for a day or more and whips dust and spray along the seafront, while the gilavar is a warmer southerly. It blows in every season, so pack a layer even for summer evenings on the boulevard.
▸ Do you need a visa for Azerbaijan?
Most visitors do, and most nationalities that need one can get an electronic visa online through the official ASAN Visa system before travel; a few neighbouring and partner countries are visa-free. Longer stays also require registration with the migration service, which hotels usually handle. Rules change, so check the official site for your passport.
▸ Is Baku safe to visit?
Baku has a reputation for low street crime, with a visible police presence and a centre that stays busy and well lit into the evening. Usual care applies with phones and bags in crowds. Use app-booked or official taxis rather than unmarked cars, and avoid photographing government buildings, military sites and oil installations, which can draw police attention.
▸ Can you swim in the Caspian at Baku?
Not along the city boulevard, which faces a working bay. For swimming, locals head to the beaches of the north Absheron coast, around Bilgah, Mardakan and Novkhani, within about an hour by car, and the beach season there peaks in July and August.
▸ How many days do you need in Baku?
Two days cover the Old City, the boulevard, the Flame Towers and the Heydar Aliyev Center. Add a day for Gobustan and the mud volcanoes, and an evening for the fire sites of the Absheron peninsula. Allow longer to add Sheki or the mountain villages around Quba, which work better as overnight trips.
▸ What language is spoken in Baku?
Azerbaijani, a Turkic language close to Turkish and written in the Latin alphabet. Russian is still widely spoken in Baku, especially among older people, and English is common in hotels and among younger people in the centre.