Baku
A walled city on a bay, a boulevard around it, and three glass towers above it doing an impression of a flame.
Baku is two cities wearing each other's clothes. Inside the walls of Icherisheher the streets are stone, narrow and quiet, and the Maiden Tower has stood at the seaward edge since the twelfth century. Step out of the gate and you are in an oil boom: mansions built by men who struck it rich when Baku was briefly one of the richest cities on earth, all carved facades and imported ambition.
Above both of them stand the Flame Towers, finished in 2012, running the shape of a fire across their full height after dark. The whole bay sits and watches a picture of a flame. Twenty minutes inland the real one is still going.
- Region
- Absheron
- District
- Baku city, 2,140 km²
- When to go
- Year round. Summer is hot, and the wind off the Caspian is the only relief.
- Nearby
- Ateshgah and Yanar Dag are both under an hour out.
Baku city, 2,140 km²
Ateshgah and Yanar Dag are both under an hour out.
