Baku

Just outside the Old City walls, Fountain Square is Baku's favourite meeting point: a broad, tree-shaded plaza with fountains, cafés and benches that fills with families on warm evenings. Running west and east from it, pedestrianised Nizami Street is lined with ornate oil-boom façades, carved balconies and stone caryatids above international shops. Walk it slowly and look up, because the architecture is the real attraction.

TipCome back after dark, when the square and the street are lit up and noticeably livelier than during the hot afternoon.

Climb through the lanes of Icherisheher to the top of the Old City hill and you reach the fifteenth-century seat of the Shirvanshahs, the dynasty that ruled this part of the Caucasus for centuries. The complex is a cluster of buildings on terraces rather than a single palace: the living quarters, a mosque with a slender minaret, a domed mausoleum, a bathhouse and the octagonal Divankhana pavilion with its finely carved portal. Small exhibitions inside show ceramics, textiles and coins found on the site.

The surrounding streets are the best part of Baku to wander without a plan. Look for the stone caravanserais that once lodged merchants from Central Asia and India, the tiny mosques tucked into corners, and the carpet and copper shops that spill out onto the pavements.

TipEnter the Old City through the Double Gates (Qosha Qala) opposite the Philharmonic garden, then walk uphill so you can come down through the lanes towards the Maiden Tower.

Baku's emblem is a massive, windowless cylinder of stone with a buttress running down one side, rising at the lower edge of the Old City close to where the shoreline once lay. Nobody is entirely sure how old it is or what it was built for; theories range from a fire temple or observatory to a defensive keep, and the name comes from legends rather than history. Inside, each level holds a short exhibition on the tower's story, and the roof gives a fine view over the Old City, the bay and the Flame Towers.

The seafront promenade, laid out in 1909 and extended many times since, now runs for several kilometres along the bay. It is Baku at its most relaxed: joggers, couples, families with prams, tea houses, fairground rides and paths through palms and pines. Highlights along the way include the Little Venice canals with their small boats, the Baku Eye observation wheel and, at the western end, the Carpet Museum.

TipWalk it in the early evening, when the heat drops, the Caspian breeze picks up and the skyline across the bay begins to glow.

Carpet weaving is one of Azerbaijan's great arts, recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage, and this museum is the place to understand it. The building itself is shaped like a partly rolled-up carpet, and inside are hundreds of pieces from the country's regional schools, each with its own motifs and palette, along with embroidery, jewellery and costumes. Displays explain knotting techniques and how to tell the styles of Quba, Shirvan, Karabakh and Ganja apart.

TipVisit before you shop for a carpet; you will be far better placed to judge what you are being offered in the Old City.

On the ridge above the western end of the Boulevard, Highland Park (Dagustu Park) offers the classic panorama of the whole bay, the Old City and the modern skyline. It is reached by a long flight of steps or by the short funicular from the seafront. Beside it runs Martyrs' Lane (Shehidler Khiyabani), a solemn memorial avenue of graves for those killed when Soviet troops entered Baku in January 1990 and for soldiers who died in the conflicts that followed, ending at an eternal flame.

This is a national place of mourning, and visitors are expected to treat it as one: walk quietly, dress modestly, do not climb on monuments and take photographs with discretion. Official delegations regularly lay flowers here.

TipCome at sunset for the view, then stay as the Flame Towers start their light show behind you.

Three curved glass towers, finished in 2012 and shaped like tongues of fire, dominate the hill above the bay and are visible from almost everywhere in the city. They hold a hotel, apartments and offices, but most visitors simply admire them from outside. After dark, thousands of LEDs across the façades turn the towers into flickering flames, the waving Azerbaijani flag and a figure holding a flag, a display best seen from the Boulevard or the Old City walls.

Designed by Zaha Hadid's practice and opened in 2012, this flowing white building seems to rise out of the ground and fold back on itself without a single straight line. It is a cultural centre with a museum on the life of the late president it is named after, a collection of national costumes and musical instruments, and changing art and design exhibitions. The sloping lawns outside, dotted with sculptures, are popular for photographs.

TipThe building is at its most striking in the soft light of early morning or late afternoon; check the official site for opening days and online tickets before you go.

On a low hillside north of the city, a wall of flame several metres long burns continuously where natural gas leaks out of the sandstone. It has burned for as long as anyone remembers and is not put out by rain. The site is now a reserve with a modern museum about fire, Zoroastrianism and the region's gas, plus an open-air display of ancient stones. The reserve website lists it as open daily from 10:00 to 19:00, with tickets sold online.

TipGo at dusk, when the flames look far more dramatic against the darkening sky.

In the suburb of Surakhani, a pentagonal walled courtyard surrounds a small altar where a flame burns under a domed canopy. The present buildings date mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Indian merchants and ascetics on the trade routes worshipped here; inscriptions in Sanskrit, Punjabi and Persian survive above the cell doors. The natural flame died out in the twentieth century after heavy gas extraction nearby, and today's fire is fed by the mains. The cells around the courtyard hold an engaging museum on the pilgrims who lived here.

TipCombine Ateshgah and Yanar Dag in a single half-day trip by taxi; they are about 25 minutes apart.

About an hour south-west of Baku, a jumble of boulders on rocky hills above the Caspian holds thousands of petroglyphs carved over many millennia: hunters, boats with oarsmen, dancers, aurochs and goats. The cultural landscape was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. A modern museum at the foot of the hill gives the background, and paths then lead up among the carvings. Look out too for the "gaval dash", a flat rock that rings like a drum when struck.

TipThere is very little shade on the hill; bring water and a hat, especially from June to September.

Azerbaijan has more mud volcanoes than almost anywhere on earth, and a cluster of them lies on a bare plateau south of the rock art. These are small grey cones that gurgle, burp and ooze cold, bubbling mud, rather than anything fiery, and the landscape around them feels lunar. The dirt tracks up to them are rough, so most visitors go on a tour or hire one of the local drivers who wait in Gobustan village.

TipSkip the trip after heavy rain, when the tracks turn to slippery clay and drivers may refuse to go up.

Around three hours north of Baku, the market town of Quba sits among apple orchards at the foot of the Greater Caucasus, and is a good base for mountain trips. Across the river lies Qirmizi Qasaba, the Red Settlement, a town with a long-established Mountain Jewish community and several working synagogues; it is often described as one of the largest Jewish communities in the former Soviet world outside Israel. The town is also famous for its carpets, woven in bold geometric designs.

High in the mountains beyond Quba, at well over 2,000 metres, Khinalug is a village of flat-roofed stone houses stacked up a hillside, where people speak their own language, unrelated to Azerbaijani. Its culture and the seasonal shepherds' migration route connected to it were inscribed by UNESCO in 2023. The drive up a winding valley road is spectacular, and simple homestays make it possible to spend a night and walk the surrounding pastures.

TipSnow can close or complicate the road in winter; late spring to early autumn is the time to go, and a local driver is wiser than a hire car.

Sheki, about five hours north-west of Baku in green foothills, is the country's most charming small town, and its historic centre, including this palace, joined the UNESCO list in 2019. The eighteenth-century summer residence of the Sheki khans is small but astonishing: its façade is filled with "shebeke", intricate wooden lattice windows assembled without nails or glue around pieces of coloured glass, and the rooms inside are covered in painted hunting scenes, battles and flowers.

TipPhotography inside the palace is usually restricted; enjoy the interiors and save your camera for the façade and the plane trees in the courtyard.

Down the hill from the palace, the Upper Caravanserai is a vast two-storey courtyard inn built for merchants on the silk routes, with arched galleries around a garden and massive wooden gates. It still works as a hotel, so you can sleep where traders once did, or just wander in for tea. The surrounding old quarter is full of craft workshops selling silk scarves, copperware and the town's famous layered halva.

A short drive north of Sheki, in the village of Kish, a small round-apsed stone church stands on what is believed to be one of the oldest Christian sites in the Caucasus, linked to the ancient kingdom of Caucasian Albania (unrelated to the Balkan country). Restored in the early 2000s with Norwegian support, it now holds a small museum, and glass panels in the floor show earlier burials beneath. The walk up through the village lanes, past walnut trees and streams, is part of the pleasure.