Baku: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The old city of Baku is twenty-two hectares inside a double wall, and about three thousand people still live in it — which is unusual, because most walled old towns in the region were emptied of residents long ago. Inside are a palace, a tower nobody can explain, and lanes narrow enough that two people cannot pass. The whole of it is below the level of the modern streets, because the city grew up around it rather than through it. Two hours, and the lanes are cobbled.
Live camera
A short history of Baku
In Baku's walled old city stand the Maiden Tower and the 15th-century Palace of the Shirvanshahs. In 1806 Russia captured the city, and in the mid-19th century oil drilling began here. In the early 20th century Baku's oilfields produced about half of the world's oil, and families such as the Nobel brothers and the Rothschilds invested fortunes in them. In 1918 it became the capital of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and in 1920 it was taken by the Red Army. Since independence in 1991 the city has been rebuilt with oil money, and in 2012 the Flame Towers were completed and the city hosted the Eurovision Song Contest.
The ten best sights in Baku
1Maiden Tower15 manat, 29 metres, and nobody knows what it was built for
2Shirvanshahs’ Palace15 manat, from the 15th century, and it has no throne room
3Juma MosqueFree, in the old city, and it stands on a fire temple
4Təzə Pir MosqueFree, from 1914, and a woman paid for the whole of it
5Bibi-Heybat MosqueFree, rebuilt in 1998 after Stalin blew the original up
6Carpet Museum10 manat, and the building is shaped like a rolled carpet
7Heydar Aliyev Center15 manat, Zaha Hadid, and there is not a straight line in it
8Museum of Modern Art7 manat, and the walls are deliberately not parallel
9National Art Museum7 manat, in two 19th-century mansions joined together
10Literature Museum5 manat, and six poets stand in niches on the front
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Baku →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Baku:
Free walking tours in Baku
A walled city on the Caspian
The old city of Baku is twenty-two hectares inside a double wall, and about three thousand people still live in it — which is unusual, because most walled old towns in the region were emptied of residents long ago. Inside are a palace, a tower nobody can explain, and lanes narrow enough that two people cannot pass. The whole of it is below the level of the modern streets, because the city grew up around it rather than through it. Two hours, and the lanes are cobbled.
- İçərişəhər · The first place in the Soviet Union to be given protected-monument status, in 1977, and a UNESCO site since 2000. The walls were doubled in the twelfth century, and the outer ring was pulled down in 1884 to widen the streets — which is why the city centre starts exactly where it does.
- Maiden Tower · Twenty-nine metres, walls five metres thick at the base, and nobody has established what it is. It is not shaped for defence, the eight storeys have no obvious use, and a stone buttress runs up one side for no structural reason. Carbon dating puts parts of it in the sixth century BC.
- Shirvanshahs’ Palace · A fifteenth-century palace with no throne room and no great hall — the Shirvanshahs ruled from Shamakhi and moved here only after an earthquake destroyed it in 1191. The complex is a set of separate buildings on different levels, including a mausoleum and a bathhouse, rather than one palace.
- Juma Mosque · The Friday mosque of the old city, rebuilt in 1899 on foundations that go back to the twelfth century — and those in turn stand on a Zoroastrian fire temple. Three religions used the same ground in sequence without demolishing what was there.
- Carpet Museum · The building is a rolled carpet in concrete, which sounds like a joke and works. Azerbaijani carpet weaving is on the UNESCO list, and the museum explains the regional patterns — a weaver’s village could be identified from a rug’s border alone.
- Baku Boulevard · Laid out in 1909 when the oil barons decided the city needed a seafront, and it has been extended ever since — it is now twenty-five kilometres long. The Caspian is not a sea but the largest lake on earth, and it is twenty-eight metres below the level of the oceans.
Oil money, twice
In 1900 Baku produced more than half the oil in the world. Nobel and Rothschild money built the mansions on these streets, and then the Soviets took all of it in 1920. The second boom came after 1994, and it built the skyline — three flame-shaped towers, a cultural centre with no straight lines, and a stadium put up in eight months for a song contest. Both booms happened fast and left their buildings standing next to each other. Two hours, flat.
- Ismailiyya Palace · An oil millionaire built it in 1913 as a Venetian Gothic palace in memory of his son, and gave it to a Muslim charity. It was burned in the 1918 riots, restored, and is now the Academy of Sciences — the facade is a copy of the Doge’s Palace, on the Caspian.
- Palace of Happiness · Built in 1912 by an oil baron for his wife, who had admired a palace in Poland — he had it copied. The Soviets turned it into the civil marriage registry, which it still is, so the city gets married in a building put up as a present.
- Fountains Square · This was the city rubbish dump until 1868, outside the walls, and it became a square because the oil money needed somewhere to be seen. It has had six names since — Parapet, Karl Marx, and the current one, which came with the fountains in the 1980s.
- Martyrs’ Lane · On the night of the nineteenth of January 1990 Soviet troops entered Baku and killed about a hundred and thirty people. They were buried here, in what had been a park, and the eternal flame was lit in 1998. The hill was a Muslim cemetery the Soviets had bulldozed in 1920.
- Flame Towers · Three towers, the tallest a hundred and eighty-two metres, finished in 2012 and covered in ten thousand LED panels that make them appear to burn at night. The shape refers to Zoroastrian fire worship, which was practised here for a thousand years before Islam.
- Heydar Aliyev Center · Zaha Hadid’s building, opened in 2012, with no straight lines anywhere in it — the walls fold into the floor and become the roof. The engineering required a bespoke space frame because no standard system could hold the curve, and it won the Design Museum award in 2014.
The ground is on fire
Natural gas seeps out of the ground across the Absheron peninsula, and in places it has been burning continuously for as long as anyone has recorded. Zoroastrians worshipped at these vents, Marco Polo wrote about oil being collected here in the thirteenth century, and the first mechanically drilled oil well in the world was sunk on this peninsula in 1846 — eleven years before Pennsylvania. Half a day, and everything is outside the city.
- Ateshgah · A pentagonal fire temple built round a natural gas vent, used by Hindu and Sikh merchants from India who traded along this route in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the inscriptions on the cells are in Sanskrit and Punjabi. The natural flame went out in 1969 when the gas field was drained, and it now runs on mains gas.
- Yanar Dağ · A ten-metre stretch of hillside that has been alight since at least the 1950s, when a shepherd is said to have dropped a cigarette. Unlike Ateshgah the flame here is genuinely natural and has never been put out — the gas comes up through porous sandstone and ignites at the surface.
- Suraxanı · The first oil well in the world drilled by machine rather than dug by hand was sunk on this peninsula in 1846, twenty-one metres deep, by a Russian engineer. By 1900 Baku was producing more than half the oil on earth, and the Nobel brothers made the fortune that funds the prize here.
- Gobustan mud volcanoes · There are about a thousand mud volcanoes on earth and roughly four hundred of them are in Azerbaijan. They erupt cold grey mud rather than lava, and the largest occasionally ignite the methane they release — in 2001 one threw a flame three hundred metres into the air.
- Bibi-Heybat Mosque · The original was built in the thirteenth century over the grave of a descendant of the Prophet, and Stalin had it dynamited in 1936 to widen a road. It was rebuilt from photographs in 1998, and the oil derricks of the first Baku field stand on the slope directly behind it.
- Mardakan Castle · A square keep twenty-two metres tall, built in 1232 by a Shirvanshah to mark a victory, and one of about thirty such towers scattered across the peninsula as a warning chain — a fire lit on one was visible from the next. Almost nobody visits them.
Getting to Baku and getting around
- Heydar Aliyev Airport · Bus H1 to the centre is 1.30 manat and runs all night
- Baku Station · The night train to Tbilisi takes 14 hours and has sleepers
- Bus terminal · Out at the edge of town, and the metro reaches it
- Sahil · The metro is 0.50 manat flat, and the stations are marble
Cheap eats in Baku
Eight counters where Baku eats standing. Tea is the whole social system: it comes in a pear-shaped armudu glass, narrow in the middle so the top cools while the bottom stays hot, and it is drunk with jam rather than sugar in the cup. Plov here is cooked under a pastry crust and there are about forty regional versions of it.
- Təzə Bazar · Open 8 to 7, and they will bargain
- Yaşıl Bazar · The green market, cheaper, and locals rather than visitors
- Qaynana · About 20-30 manat a head
- Dolma · In the old city, and the courtyard is the reason
- Firuzə · In the old city, and the plov comes under a pastry lid
- Art Garden · A courtyard in the old city, and tea is 3 manat with jam
- Chinar · Asian food, expensive, and where the city is seen
- Şərq Bazarı · Spices, dried fruit and carpets, and haggling is expected
Museums in Baku
- Carpet Museum · 10 manat, closed Mondays, and two hours is enough
- Heydar Aliyev Center · 15 manat, and the lawn outside is free to walk on
- Palace of the Shirvanshahs · 15 manat, and it is a set of buildings rather than one
- Maiden Tower · 15 manat, eight floors of stairs, and the roof is the point
- National Art Museum · 7 manat, two oil-boom mansions joined by a corridor
- Museum of Modern Art · 7 manat, closed Mondays, and it is rarely busy
- Literature Museum · 5 manat, and six poets stand in niches across the front
- Ateshgah · 9 manat, 30km out, and the inscriptions are in Sanskrit
Nature and day trips near Baku
- Baku Boulevard · Free, lit all night, and bikes for hire along it
- Highland Park · Free, the best view of the bay, and open all night
- Gobustan mud volcanoes · An hour south, and a 4x4 from the car park is 30 manat
- Yanar Dağ · 9 manat, a hillside on fire, and better after dark
- Nardaran · A village on the peninsula, a 1301 fortress, and pomegranates
- Quba · Three hours by bus, and the bridge is the only way across
- Lahıc · A copper-working village, cobbled, and the smiths still work
- Şahdağ · A 4,243m peak and the ski resort, four hours north
Things to do in Baku with kids
- Funicular · 1 manat, two minutes up to the park, and glass sides
- Ferris wheel · 5 manat, 60 metres, and the sea on three sides
- Baku Boulevard · Free, a small lake with boats, and space to run
- Yanar Dağ · 9 manat, 30 minutes out, and best at dusk
- Maiden Tower · 15 manat, stairs all the way, and the roof looks over the bay
- Sahil Park · Free, shaded, and in the middle of the shopping streets
Live music in Baku
Mugham is the Azerbaijani classical form: a singer and three instruments improvising inside a fixed mode, closer to a raga than to a song, and recognised by UNESCO. One mugham performance can run forty minutes without a repeated phrase.
- Philharmonic Hall · From 10 manat, and the garden concerts are free
- Jazz Center · About 15 manat, and the music starts at nine
- Nizami Cinema · From 8 manat, a 1934 building, and it still shows films
- Crystal Hall · Built in eight months for Eurovision 2012, and it holds 25,000
- Tofiq Bahramov Stadium · Tickets from 5 manat
- Olympic Stadium · 68,000 seats, and the 2019 Europa League final was in it
Nightlife in Baku
- Nizami Street · The pedestrian street, and the city walks it after nine
- Fountains Square · Terraces on all four sides, and open late in summer
- İçərişəhər · Courtyard bars inside the walls, and quieter than outside
- Baku Boulevard · Where the whole city walks after dark, and it is free
- Port Baku · The expensive end, and the rooftop bars are on it
- Highland Park · The Flame Towers burn from here, and it costs nothing
Frequently asked questions about Baku
What is there to see in Baku?
The top sights in Baku are Maiden Tower, Shirvanshahs’ Palace and Juma Mosque. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Baku?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Baku without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Baku?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Baku, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A walled city on the Caspian.
How do you get to Baku and get around?
The main ways are Heydar Aliyev Airport, Baku Station and Bus terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Baku, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Baku that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Baku for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.